ROGE
by Raalm
Summary: Team ROGE are in their second year of Beacon Academy but unseen events will soon change their lives forever. Join the members of Team ROGE as they confront the dangerous world of Remnant and come to terms with their own tragic pasts. (Finished writing)
1. A New Home

_**A/N**_

 _ **Hello Readers, so this is my first upload and I have been working on this for a while now. Its is an original story set in the world of RWBY that will not interact with they series as it is set 2 years before the RWBY series; though i may occasionally mention a character from the series, it will never be anything major.**_ _ **I intend for this to be a long series so please leave a review or a message to tell me what you think. I already have a few chapters written out and I am still able to change things so if there is anything you don't think works or improvement you think I could make then please don't hesitate to tell me as all criticism to**_ ** _appreciated as long as its constructive. now the first 2 chapters are a little short but after that i promise they get longer. I intend to release this every Monday if you are interested enough to stick around (I am likely to forget occasionally so I cant give an exact time)._**

 ** _Also, much thanks to blacsparrow for reading the chapters I have written, he/she has been a big help with some of the finer things so please check him/her out._**

* * *

 **Chapter 1 - A New Home**

 **Raalm Neeth**

Raalm had dreamt of this moment for as long as he could remember and finally it had happened; he had arrived at Beacon Academy, one of the best schools in the world, and he had managed to get accepted. When he first got his acceptance letter he refused to believe it was real; thinking it was another prank by one of the other kids from his village but nope, it was real, he had been accepted to his dream school. Finally, Raalm could leave his small village and start a life in the city he had admired since he first journeyed there as a young boy, clutching his father's arm the whole time so as to not get lost; but those times were long gone now and this was going to be far from easy as Beacon was no ordinary school, it was a combat school. A School dedicated to the training of huntsman and huntresses, the finest warriors in the world who's sworn duty it was to protect this world from anything that meant it and its people harm; and now it was his turn to take a place in the halls of Beacon, to shine above the rest and prove to everyone back home that this was where he belonged.

Raalm had grown up in a small village on the outskirts of Vale called Lenter, home to no more than fifty people. He spent most of his time either training or helping around the farms but whenever he had a spare minute, he would find himself a nice secluded area and study one of the many books his father had bought back for him on his trips to Vale, he would learn as much as he could about the history of the four kingdoms, the great war, huntsmen and huntresses, and any other subjects that he found interesting. Huntsmen and huntresses were not an uncommon sight in Lenter, as being outside the defences of the kingdom meant that the village was often attacked and in need of help, so by the age of nine Raalm had already read and seen enough to know what he wanted to do with his life. He worked tirelessly to improve his fighting ability, teaching himself mostly but often getting some assistance from the huntsmen that came to defend the village and when he turned seventeen he applied for Beacon Academy. After rigorous exams and combat demonstrations, he finally got the letter of acceptance and three weeks later he said goodbye to his family and set off for Vale with his trusty weapon, _Wildfire_ , two suitcases full of clothes and his chestnut horse, Cassie.

Hopping down from his horse, Raalm looked up at his new school with awe. Great white stone arches rose from the ground in a circle, towering over him and highlighting the magnificent courtyard. On either side of the arches was shallow moats of water and red trees, that Raalm had only seen in before in pictures, separated the bodies of water creating a magnificent display of symmetry through the entire area. One solitary path ran down the middle of at all, wide enough for five people to walk side by side, with lights lining either side; at the end of the path stood a statue of a huntsman and huntress standing on a raised rock and below the rock lay a Beowolf, seemingly defeated and attempting to crawl away as the rock came crashing down on him. In the distance the Cross Continental Transmit System, a gift from the kingdom of Atlas after the great war that allowed for communication between the four kingdoms, could be seen towering over the entrance to the school, a constant reminder of the peace that they now shared. The entrance itself was a made of marvellous white stone, two glass windows that rose to the very top of the building itself with a giant pair of oak doors separating them. Green trees surrounded Beacon Academy itself and behind him roared a frighteningly large waterfall, though it was currently blocked off by an airship that was filled with students, most of them returning with their school uniforms already on but some of them looked new.

Raalm must have stood there for ten minutes staring at his new home until finally, pulling on the reigns of his horse, he started walking towards the school before realising he had no idea where the stables were. Looking around he decided that instead of spending an hour looking around for them he would simply have to ask someone for directions; fortunately, he was surrounded by students, most talking among themselves and walking to the school but some still seemed to be waiting for other friends. Steeling up his courage, Raalm approached two of the girls wearing the Beacon uniform.

"Umm… Excuse me, I don't suppose you know where the stables are," Raalm asked one of the girls, putting on his best smile.

"Why did you bring a horse to school?" Her friend interjected before she could reply.

"Her names Cassie, and she's how I got here, I didn't really have the money for the airships," Raalm replied, a little bitterness to his voice.

"Don't mind her, she's just a little bored of waiting for her boyfriend" said the first girl, giving her friend a little push who in turn rolls her eyes. "If you go to the end of the path and turn left at the statue, there's another path that will lead you right to the stables."

"Thank you very much," Raalm responded with a little nod of his head, while walking away.

As he walks down towards the stables, a shifting in the trees to his left catches his attention causing him to stop and watch as a girl jumps out of a tree and lands with an impressive roll in front of his horse, causing Cassie to recoil slightly in freight.

"Hey, watch my horse," Raalm half shouted, while calming Cassie down.

"I'm sorry," she quickly replied. "I just love horses, do you mind if I pet her," she added with a smile.

"Umm… Yea sure, just be gentle, you gave her quite a spook," Raalm sighed, having successfully calmed Cassie down.

While the girl stood there quietly for a couple of minutes letting Cassie see her, Raalm took the chance to look at her properly. Her light brown hair was cut, falling just down to her shoulders and her eyes were a shade of green that would make leaves themselves jealous. She wore a brown t-shirt with a short pair of green jean shorts and leggings with a green, brown and black camouflage pattern on them. On her feet was a strange pair of green shoes that didn't look comfortable but he guessed they were probably better for climbing. A pair of daggers, one seemingly larger than the other, clung to her hips and across her back was a short bow that looked a little different from the ones that had been used in the village, especially the thick bowstring; but as many huntsmen and huntresses carried weapons that could transform into another weapon, this wasn't really too strange. Next to her bow was her quiver, a bit larger than most and with a metal rod attached to opposite ends on either side but other than the arrows not seeming to be long enough, nothing really seemed special about it. Everything about her appearance showed that she had spent a lot of time hunting and if she had managed to get into Beacon then she was probably very skilled at it too; truthfully, Raalm doubted he would have even spotted her in the trees had she not jumped out. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing, approaching very cautiously from the front and keeping her eyes on the Cassie's ears, she held out her hand and waited for the horse to sniff it. After a couple of seconds Cassie nudged the girls hand with her nose, giving her permission to pet away, the girl smiled and began scratching the top of Cassie's nose, working her way around to the horse's side.

"What's her name?" she asked politely, not stopping her petting for a second.

"Cassie," said Raalm. Moving around to pet Cassie's nose. "And I'm Raalm"

"I'm Opal," she responded, smiling away. "I haven't seen a horse in ages" she continued.

"Well you seem to know how to handle them," Raalm replied.

"Yeah, I used to have one myself," she said, the smile faded slightly showing that it probably wasn't a topic she wanted to talk about.

"Well, I better be getting her to the stables, we don't really have much time left until the assembly," Raalm said while picking up Cassie's reigns. "You're free to visit her whenever you like," he added before walking away.

"Thanks, will do," she replied while smiling.

The rest of the walk to the stables was rather uneventful and after checking Cassie in, he retraced in steps to the schools main building. Standing before the grand doors of his dream school, he took a deep breath before he stepped through and finally entered the school he had trained eight years to get to get into.


	2. New Arrivals

**A/N**

 ** _So as promised I'm starting my Monday schedule now so expect them to be out around then. I apologise to anyone reading, that this is another short chapter but this is the last one as the rest are roughly 2-3x as long._**

 ** _Once again, thanks to anyone who takes the time to read my story, whether you review or not, you are all amazing and as always, a massive thank you to Blacsparrow for reading and his/her feedback on the series._**

* * *

 **Chapter 2 – New arrivals**

 **Garrick Cane**

"I'm here dad," Garrick muttered to himself as he stepped off of the airship that had carried him to Beacon. "Time to make you proud."

Garrick looked around as he walked, carefully observing everyone he could see. Most of the students were wearing Beacon's black and red uniform that he had seen around Vale quite often, but some among them were still wearing their combat clothes. As he observed all the new students, looking for any that he may be able to get along with, he noticed that most of them seemed to be wearing almost the same thing. Plate armour covering various parts of their body and weapons that ranged from swords to maces and crossbows to assault rifles; although one boy seemed to stand out from the rest, a rather thin boy with one thin blonde streak running through the left side of his pitch black hair. He wore a dark red zip-up sleeveless jacket with a yellow pattern of chains crossing at the back in a shoelace formation, underneath was a grey t-shirt with some kind of pattern on it that Garrick couldn't make out. His forearms wore a dark red bracer that led into black finger-less gloves and left his upper arms exposed, revealing a rather nasty looking scar that travelled along the length of his left arm while down his right arm snaked an actual chain that looked to be made of some kind of pale metal connecting to a circular metal backpack resting between his shoulder blades. His jeans were black but became grey further down, ending in grey trainers lined with yellow shoelaces and a yellow sole. The weirdest thing about him however was not his attire, but the fact that beside him stood a brown horse.

Garrick considered saying hello to the boy but decided against it as horses usually freaked out around him, in fact most animals did. Garrick came from a family of Faunus, humans that had traits of animals, in the case of Garrick's family, that animal was a bear and thanks to this bear heritage, animals had always been rather scared of him. This made having pets impossible and the one time his parents had tried to give him a dog, it had refused to come out from under the table; but being a bear Faunus wasn't all bad. He could hear far better than any human thanks to an extra pair of round ears atop his head and even smell things from much further away, best of all was the strength it gave him. This strength allowed him to lift things that no human would be able to, enough strength to lift the back of a car on his own.

Snapping out of his memories Garrick smiled to himself and picked up his suitcase slinging it over his shoulder next to his weapon, a weapon that had once belonged to his father, and was about to begin his walk down the long path the led to Beacon when he spotted a girl walk past him, head down and looking terrified. Garrick wasn't fond seeing people looking down and decided that it was now his job to cheer her up.

 **Evie Starr**

Evie had never been more scared in her life as she stepped off the airship, having waited until everyone else had got off first and finally being told by the pilot that she needed to get off or he would have to fly back to the city with her still on board. She nervously took a look around the courtyard and immediately regretted it; everywhere she looked were people covered in armour, people she knew that she would have to fight against in sparring class one day. The thought of fighting them sent chills down her back as she imagined taking a hit from the massive mace of a bear Faunus that looked to be an entire foot taller than her and easily the best physically built out of everyone here. Evie herself had never really been much of a fighter, always preferring to help heal injuries rather than cause them. Years ago she would have been more than happy to go to a regular school, learn to be a doctor and eventually get a job at the same hospital as her mother; but after a trip to a nearby village with her mother to help the wounded after an attack from the creatures of Grimm, Evie knew that she could never sit by and help only those within the safety of the city walls while others in the outlying villages could be in far more need.

Three weeks later Evie had decided to take up combat training from one of her mother's friends and worked as hard as she could to get better, and while she had improved quite a lot, she was still far from an expert. The only reason Evie believed she even got into Beacon Academy was because of how much of a natural affinity she had with dust. Evie had learned from a young age how to use dust to aid in the healing of others and now wore full arm length gloves that were imbued with her four favourite types of dust. Water dust to clean wounds, ice dust to reduce pain and swelling, fire dust was used to provide heat to a wound and aid in blood flow, and even lightning dust for dire situations in with someone would go into cardiac arrest and she needed to jump start their heart.

Slowly taking her first step forward, eyes looking down at the ground, she only got more nervous. Even though everyone was busy with their own conversations she still felt like everyone was judging her, thinking she didn't look good enough and maybe they were right, maybe she wasn't; but just as she thought that, she felt a hand on her shoulder and raised her head. She was now looking into the sky blue eyes of the bear Faunus carrying the giant mace she had seen earlier.

"Keep your head up, you should be proud you made it here because they only accept the best of the best," he told her while smiling reassuringly.

"Th-Thanks," Evie replied, giving him a small smile and feeling a little embarrassed.

"No problem, my names Garrick Cane. If you ever need cheering up then just come and find me," he said confidently.

"E-Evie St-Starr," she stuttered back. "And I will keep that in m-mind."

He smiles and walks away, soon followed by Evie who now, thanks to Garrick, felt a little more confident that this was where she belonged.


	3. A Big Slumber Party

**Chapter 3 – A Big Slumber Party**

 **Raalm Neeth**

As Raalm entered the school building, he found that he was standing in a large, circular Amphitheatre made of light and dark grey stone. A stage sat opposite the doors, made of the same light grey stone, easily large enough to accommodate a hundred people, but currently only microphone stood there; a slight slope of dark grey stone ran off the edge of the stage and was lined with bright blue lights. The rest of the room was rather empty but still spacious enough to allow for a couple of hundred people to stand together. Above the room was a roof made entirely of glass and a few rows of raised benches that lined the wall and allowed guests to sit and watch performances. Two doors stood on either side of the stage, Raalm assumed these doors led into the school itself as they were the only other doors in the room. Students surrounded the stage, talking excitedly and looking to the distant corners for any sign of the microphones owner.

Raalm took his place behind all the students and stood patiently waiting for someone to come out and speak to them. Looking around, he saw that all of the students were first years, still clad in their heavy armor and holding their weapons and his eyes fell on to a familiar face. Opal, sitting on one of the raised benches that lined the wall with a look of boredom on her face, her choice of position did not shock Raalm though as her antics in the trees and her weapon clearly showed that she liked higher places where she could see everything around her. Noticing him, she gave a quick wave of her hand which Raalm returned, and quickly went back to watching the stage; Fortunately, they no longer had to wait. A woman with blonde hair and wearing a white shirt, purple cape and black skirt walked onto the stage and stepped up to the microphone.

"Quiet everyone," the woman spoke, her voice carrying to every part of the room and casting a silence over every other voice that had been speaking. "My name is Glynda Goodwitch and I am sure that you are all anxious to get to bed as night is nearly upon us but before that our headmaster, Professor Ospin, would like to say a few words."

As she finished speaking, another person walked onto the stage, this time it was a man wearing a button down a green suit that almost looked black and a black suit jacket. A lighter green scarf was wrapped around his neck and small tinted glasses rested on his nose. Judging from the grey hair, Raalm guessed that the man was older than he looked but still young enough to take on every student here, and have enough energy left to tell each of them everything they done wrong during the fight. He carried a cup emblazoned with Vales symbol, two axes in a circle of wheat, in one hand and a black cane with a white handle in the other, though he did not seem to have any problems with his legs. As he walked to the microphone, Glynda gave him a quick smile and stepped away, but still remained close by.

"First of all I would like to congratulate each and every one of you for making it this far," Ozpin said, pausing for a brief moment to allow the clapping to die down. "Whether you have come from inside Vale or outside of the kingdom you have all done extremely well to earn a place here; but if you believe that the difficult part is over then you could not be more mistaken. You are here to become huntsman and huntresses, a job that will require one hundred percent of your conviction and if you feel that you are unable to give that, then I suggest you leave now."

Professor Ozpin paused again for a moment, waiting to see if anyone would leave but no one did.

"Good, now I want to make it very clear that as this school we will not be treating you as children, at this school you will be treated as warriors. You will be expected to train, study and to achieve the very best you can," Ozpin continued. "It is our job to make sure that by the time you leave this school, you are capable of handling whatever the outside world throws at you. I would also like you to keep in mind that while we can teach you as much as possible here at Beacon Academy, there are still many things that you will have to learn for yourself; as such, do not expect to stop learning once you leave this place."

With those final words he stepped to the side a began a slow walk off the back of the stage and Glynda took her place at the microphone.

"In a few moments you will all follow me to the dorm, where you will be staying for the night," Glynda said. "Tomorrow will be your initiation; so I advise you to get plenty of rest."

After several moments passed, Glynda called for everyone to follow her and began to head through the door to the left of the stage. Raalm and the other students followed Glynda into a hallway with four doors, each with a sign.

"These are the locker rooms, and this one belongs to the first years," Glynda said, walking through the door and into a room filled with lockers and benches. "This is where you will store you weapon while you are in class, now if everyone would mind finding a locker and putting your weapon away then we can finally get moving to the dorm.

Raalm approached the closest locker he could find and pulled the chain from his arm and wound it around his backpack before putting it into the locker and closing the door, entering a four-digit code to make sure it was locked.

"Now it is it is important to note that each locker is rocket propelled and can be sent to any location by entering a six-digit code into your scroll, also the locker room is available twenty-four hours a day," Glynda added, walking back toward the door.

Everyone one followed as Glynda left and led them to another door that led back outside and just a few meters away stood a large four story building made of brown stone. Multiple windows lined the face of the building and a pair of wooden doors stood in the middle, not quite as grand as the door at Beacons entrance but still finely crafted out of dark oak. As Glynda strode towards the building she began to speak again.

"For tonight you will all be sleeping in the communal area on the ground floor, the upper floors are off limits. After initiation is over and you all have your teams, each team will be given their own room. That room will be your space for the next year of your life and you are free to do whatever you want with it," she said, clearly having given this speech many times before. "Anything within reason that is," she quickly added.

Glynda pushed open the doors open to reveal a room roughly the size of house, Raalm guessed that the room would have usually been filled with tables and chairs for studying and maybe a few more comfortable chairs would have sat beside the fireplace at the far end of the room; but for now, all that filled the room was sleeping bags.

"Girls on the left and boys on the right, other than that, feel free to sleep where ever you like in the room," Glynda continued. "The bathrooms are on the right, you can all get changed into your night clothes in there," she added, as she exited the dorm room.

"She didn't even read us a bedtime story," a bear Faunus quipped, earning a couple of laughs from the students as they made their way to the toilets.

An hour later and everyone was had changed into their night clothes.

Not feeling to tired himself, Raalm decided to take a look at some books that were on a tall, bulky bookcase in the corner of the room; Fortunately, he found one of his favorites and settled into the corner of the room to read in peace. However, after a couple of minutes of trying to read, it became very apparent that peace was not something he would get. Everyone was so busy talking about Professor Ozpins speech or how the teams would be chosen, that the room was practically buzzing like a hive of wasps, making it impossible to concentrate on the book. Putting the book back on the shelf, Raalm got up and began to walk around to take a look at all the students now that they no longer had their thick armor on, most of the guys were no bigger than he was but some among them were just as intimidating as when they had their armor on. Most notable of which was the dark skinned bear Faunus that had made the joke earlier, Raalm guessed that must have been at least six and a half feet tall and built like a truck. Muscles protruded from every part of his body and silver hair fell down to his fell down ears while another pair of round ears protruded from the top of his head covered in small silver hairs. Currently he was surrounded by people that seemed to be laughing at his jokes, though Raalm doubted that if the man was not so well built then the people wouldn't have been so kind to him. Raalm had no problems the Faunus, but there was an undeniable tension in the world between humans and Faunus that had caused multiple wars between the two and still to this day, both Faunus and human fighting each other was not uncommon. Though Raalm did have to agree that most of the blame fell on the humans, as it had only been in recent years that Faunus had been accepted as people and not animals. Despite this, many people were still racially bias against Faunus kind and many shops still refused to pay them properly for their work or even serve them. Fortunately, everyone seemed to be behaving themselves and having a good time.

Raalm moved on, continuing to observe the crowd and suddenly found himself face to face with Opal, who still looked rather bored.

"Hey there," Raalm said, taking a quick note of how bored she looked. "Looking for somewhere high up?"

"I wish there was, I can never really get much sleep on the when I'm on the ground," she replied.

Raalm took a quick look around and saw that she was right but also saw a solution to that problem. "Come with me," he said walking towards the heavily muscled Faunus.

The boy's ears twitched as he saw them approaching, he was definitely more cautious than he appeared but he wore a smile on his face nonetheless as he greeted them.

"Hello," he said in a cheerful voice. "Come to join our little party?

Move over a little Arnold, make some room for the lovely couple."

"Umm… We're not a couple, he's not really my type," replied Opal, not flustered one bit by the presumption. "No offense," she quickly added to Raalm.

"None taken," Raalm smiled back, turning to talk to the Faunus. "I was actually wondering if you could give me a hand moving something, I would do it myself but it's far too heavy."

"OH, so you think that since I'm part bear that I would be able to lift heavy things do you?" the boy responded, starting to looking a little angry.

Raalm starts to back away but the boys glare quickly turn to a smile.

"Relax, I'm just messing with you," he laughed at them. "I'm happy to help. What do you need moving?"

"Wow, thought I had annoyed you," Raalm breathed back, allowing a little smile to form. "Just one of those bookcases if you can."

"No problem buddy, I'm Garrick Cane by the way," he says standing up and holding out his hand.

"Raalm Neeth," Raalm replied, taking Garrick's hand in a firm handshake.

"Opal Drake" Opal said, now looking a little interested in Raalm's plan.

While walking over to the bookcase Raalm had been sitting next to moments ago, Garrick apologized for his little stunt saying that he just couldn't pass up the opportunity. Raalm had to admit that Garrick had fooled him and they both quickly laughed it off.

"So where do you want it," Garrick said as they arrived at the bookcase.

"Uh… just over there on the girls' side, right up against the other one," Raalm replied, pointing to a similar bookcase on the left side of the room. "Give me a minute and I'll take all the books…" Raalm began to say, before hearing a loud grunt behind him followed by some rattling that causes him to turn around and see Garrick holding the bookcase in both hands. "Never mind then."

People saw what was happening and quickly moved out of Garrick's way, giving him room to walk. A small bead of sweat began to form on his forehead as he got halfway across the room but he still continued, refusing to stop for a single moment. Finally, they reached the other bookcase and Garrick placed the one he was carrying on the ground and started pushing it up against the other, making sure there was no room between them.

"Phew, that was heavier than it looked," he managed to say through heavy breaths. "What's this for anyway," he added, looking a little confused.

"Opal said she has trouble sleeping on low ground so I just wanted to help her out a little," Raalm explained "Thanks a lot for the help too, I owe you one."

"It's no trouble, better to make sure everyone is rested for tomorrow," Garrick smiled and turned to Opal. "Need a lift up?"

"No thank you, I'll be fine," Opal replied nimbly running up the side of the bookcase and grabbing the edges, pulling herself up. "That's much better, thank you both for your help, you really didn't have to." She says looking down from her new perch.

"It's cool, I'm always happy to help those in need," he laughs up at her, as Raalm throw her a sleeping bag and a pillow. "I guess we should both be getting to sleep now anyway; we have a big day ahead of us."

"I suppose your right," Raalm agreed. "Goodnight both of you," he added as he walked away.

"Goodnight," both Opal and Garrick replied.

As he walked back to his sleeping bag, Raalm took a look and the clock on the wall. Almost an hour had passed since he had stopped reading his book and a sudden fatigue began to overtake his body. Laying down, Raalm thought on all that had happened today and smiled.

 _Today was a good day,_ he thought to himself as he drifted off to sleep.


	4. Initiation (Part 1)

**A/N**

 **So just a quick note, I'm uploading this early because I'm going on holiday tomorrow and wont have any internet but the normal schedule will resume once I return.**

 **Also, as usual, a big shout-out to Blacksparrow for being an amazing early reader and letting me know what works and whats needs changing. Without him/her this series would be an even bigger mess.**

* * *

 **Chapter 4 - Initiation (Part 1)**

 **Opal Drake**

Opal awoke with a start and instinctively reached for her bow, forgetting that she had stored it in a locker the previous night; sighing she sat herself up and began to climb down from the bookcases she had slept on. Taking a quick look at the clock she saw that it was six. She had slept for nearly nine hours and in an hour, Glynda would be coming to wake everyone up and take them to wherever their initiation would take place. As she landed on the floor she noticed she was not the only person awake, in fact a large majority of people had already woken up and had already began their morning exercises. Both boys and girls were busy doing sit-ups and press-ups, some even helping others by holding their feet. Since there was no bar for Opal to do her pull-ups she had to settle for doing her normal twenty push-up and sit-ups, though she made a note to do them later.

After she had finished she made her way to the side of the room, grabbed her bag and started towards the bathroom to get changed. Though the line was a little longer than Opal would have liked, it didn't take too long before it was her turn, as most the girls here seemed to understood that make-up wasn't very important today and took very little time to get ready. Opal quickly changed and started to feel much better now that she was back in her shorts and t-shirt, the freeing feeling of air on her arms and legs made always made her feel more comfortable. Exiting the bathroom, she could see that almost everyone was now awake and either looking for their bags or waiting to for their turn to change. She climbed back up onto the perch and sat on the edge, observing the proceedings that went on below and spotting a smiling face waking towards her.

"Hey there cat girl," Garrick joked, smiling up at her. "Did you have a good night's sleep?"

"It wasn't bad, prefer the trees though," she replied honestly. "What about you?"

"Pretty good, better than the cave floors I'm used to," he responded with a smile.

"Nice try, I'm not as easy to fool as Raalm," Opal smiled back.

"Yeah, didn't think so, worth a shot though," he laughed. "So you nervous for the test? What do you think it will be?"

"Not really nervous," she replied honestly. Opal didn't even remember the last time she had felt nervous, she was always confident in her skills and was always able to get away if the danger was too great. "But I also have no idea what it could be, what do you think?"

"Well, since this is a combat school, I'm guessing there will be fighting involved; though whether it's against Grimm or each other, I have no idea," he said back, the smile still there but fading toward the end of his guess.

"Not keen on fighting people?" Opal asked, having noticed the slight change in his smile.

"Not keen on fighting friends," he quickly replied with a weak smile.

Opal understood where he was coming from, she would rather slay a hundred creatures of Grimm than point her bow at a friend. Not feeling the need to say more, Garrick gave a quick nod of his head and walked towards the line for the bathroom, leaving Opal alone to contemplate what she would do if she was ever put in that position. Fortunately, she did not have much time to dwell on those thoughts as a couple of minutes later a loud click was heard from the door and Glynda Goodwitch stepped into the room.

"Once you are ready, you can head into the cafeteria for your breakfast," she half shouted over the crowd of talking people. "We will be leaving in one hour. Once you are changed and fed, you will meet me outside this building with your weapons, if you are not there then you will fail."

She turned and left the building, followed by everyone who had already finished changing, not feeling remotely hungry Opal made her way to the locker room. Once there she quickly found the locker she had stored her weapons in, entering in her code and watching the door fly open to reveal her most prized possessions. Inside was a pure, white bow that she loved more than anything in the world, she had spent years fine tuning it, getting it to feel right and not be too heavy despite its design. Beside it sat _Tim_ _ί_ _and Ѐleos,_ a pair of mirror daggers, the blades in the shape of dragon teeth, the handles in the forms of a dragons with their wings wrapped around themselves and there tails wrapping around the bottom of the blades. _Éleos_ was slightly shorter than _Timí_ but she loved them too; just not as much as _Estía_.

Pulling her quiver out she quickly checked that everything was working properly. She pulled one of the seemingly short arrows free, it extended as she pulled, turning from the size of a crossbow bolt into a full length arrow, and after a quick inspection she returned it to the quiver. Afterwards she pressed a button on the belt that caused the quiver itself to clamp down on the arrows and spin 180 degrees, revealing a second compartment filled with more arrow with a variety of coloured feathers.

Satisfied that everything was working as it should, she slipped the quiver into position, picked up _Estía_ and slung it over her shoulder to rest beside its arrows; afterwards, she fastened the daggers to her hip, _Timí_ to her left and _Éleos_ to her right. She pressed the button on the quiver's belt once more and it turned back into its original position, showing black feathered arrows, and turned to walk out of the locker room, which was now full of people obviously too nervous to eat, gathering their weapons.

Opal exited the building and stood over by the other students, it seemed that everyone had now left the dormitory and was currently either retrieving their weapon, waiting in the courtyard or finishing eating. That was until a girl came stumbling out of the dormitory doors, saw everyone waiting and began to apologize profusely; but Opal was more stunned by the girl herself than her actions. She was small, smaller than Opal, who considered herself to be short, standing at only 5'8". Her hair was a pale blonde that seemed to shine in the sunlight, and her eyes a shade of pink that danced red as the sun hit them. She wore a t-shirt made of flowing, ocean blue fabric that reached down to her thighs with a white shawl covering in gold flecks draped over it. White jeans covered her legs and led into white boots with blue and gold laces. On her arms were full arm length gloves with a pattern of four different coloured crosses at the top, turning into snakes that coiled their way down and around her arm, until each snake coiled around a different finger. The overall effect was breathtaking, every part of her seemed to shine and if Opal wasn't such a skeptic, then this girl could probably have convinced her that angels really did exist.

As the girl pulled herself together and ran off towards the locker rooms, Opal managed to pull her attention away from her, though her heart was now definitely beating a little faster. Shaking her head, she pulled her mind away from the beautiful girl and concentrated on getting her focus back on the fight that lay ahead of her; though as she turned around she caught Garrick giving her a knowing smile and a sly wink. An hour passed and finally everyone was outside, after checking the dorm and the lockers room Glynda told them all to follow her and began to head deeper into the school grounds. They walked past a couple of connected buildings on the way to their destination, from what Opal could see, the building held classrooms and lecture halls. A large library stood alone on the right, some students sat on the stairs to the door dressed in their Beacon uniforms, Opal wasn't too keen on the red in the uniform, preferring green herself.

"Try not to get yourself killed firsties," one of the students shouted, causing his friends to snicker briefly before they all hurried away after a rather poisonous look from Glynda.

The rest of the walk went by without incident, they had left the building behind a while ago and now they were walking across Beacons fields, towards a cliff that overlooked a huge forest. At the edge of the cliff was a figure, still too far away but Opal already knew who it would be and sure enough she was right. Professor Ozpin stood facing away from them, carrying the same cup and cane he had been carrying during the opening assembly. Behind him was a series of metal panels attached to the floor, each one emblazoned with Vales symbol.

"Would each of you please take your place on one of the panels," said Glynda, walking to stand next to Ozpin.

As everyone found themselves a panel, Ozpin turned and began to speak to everyone.

"Before you is the Emerald Forest, one of the most dangerous places in all of Vale," he started, immediately grabbing the attention of every student there. "This forest is home to numerous types of Grimm, both big and small; and this is where your initiation will take place."

Opal looked out over the forest and breathed a sigh of relief, trees were where she felt at home, they were her playing field and nothing had yet bested her in them.

"Your mission is to reach the temple at the northern end of the forest, retrieve ONE of the relics there and bring it back to the top of this cliff," he continued. "Both how you performed in the forest and how long it takes for you to return will be taken into consideration and a grade will be given appropriately. It is also important to note that the first person you make eye contact with in the forest will be your partner for the duration of your time in this school, if both of you have already retrieved a relic, then you must take one of them back to the temple."

Murmurs of voices break out now at this newest revelation, many student looking at friends they thought would be their partners in shock.

Not paying the talking any mind, Ozpin continues. "The entirety of this test will be observed by us and we will know who your partners are the second you make them; so do not believe you can trade partners with someone else. I also should make it clear that while we are observing you, we shall not intervene. Should you be in danger, you are to fight your way out, or die trying." Ozpin finished, on a rather dark note.

Everyone now stared at Professor Ozpin in shock, as he stood there and simply sipped his coffee.

"In a few moments you will be dropped into the Emerald Forest, I advise that you get ready," Glynda added shortly, tapping some buttons on her scroll, Opal began to feel gears rotate beneath her feet and quickly adjusted her stance, immediately aware of what was going to happen.

A few seconds passed and Opal heard a surprised shout at the end of the row and prepped herself for her turn. As she waited she saw student after student flying through the air, launched unceremoniously from their own panel. Briefly before Opal's panel launched her into the air, she could swear the she heard Garrick shout something about how much he had always wanted to base jump; before she could laugh however, she was in the air, steel focused and already with _Estía_ in her hands. Soaring through the air she took a moment to take in the scenery, wishing she could stay this high forever, before pressing the button on her quiver causing it to spin once more to her coloured arrows. As the pulled at an arrow with a see through feather and felt it extend before finally locking into a fully-fledged arrow and she pressed the button on her quiver once more returning it to its original position before readying her arrow and drawing back the bowstring, prepared to release at the right point.

She neared the trees and took aim, a large tree she was heading toward was her target and as soon as she was close enough she released the arrow, it flew perfectly striking the tree and with no way for the dust inside the arrow to go forward, it exploded out of the back. A large gust of air, powerful enough to blow the leaves off of a nearby tree erupted from the arrow and Opal flew into in, the power of the new air current slowing her enough to allow her to slip out the bottom of the air flow and for her to catch a branch, flip herself up while freeing a black feathered arrow from her quiver and pull it back along _Estía_. As she landed in a crouch on the branch, she looked around for any possible threats and after seeing none she lowered her bow and set off to look for the temple, never once touching the ground.

 **Evie Starr**

Evie flew through the air and at first had no idea what she would do, but quickly calmed herself down and readied herself for what she had to do. Waiting for the right moment, she steadied her hands and pushed them together while holding her breath as she allowed the bright yellow dust to seep from her clothing, surrounding her in a light buzz of electricity; suddenly, she felt herself slow down as the electricity began to alter the gravity around her making it a lot lighter and slowing her descent. As she reached the ground, she allowed the electricity to subside and collapsed onto her knees, breathing heavily. _It was far from pretty but it worked_ , she thought as she finally stood up and looked around at her surroundings. Trees stood in all directions, deep brown trunks leading into luscious green leaves; bushes and tall green grass grew from all parts of the ground and the air was filled with a scent that Evie couldn't quite place.

Dusting herself off, Evie pulled out a short sword made of a golden coloured metal that she had received two years ago and had decided at the time to name it _Lieben._ Looking at the sun in the small clearing above her, she determined which way was north and began to head deeper into the forest.

Evie walked for what felt like hours but she knew that it was only really a couple of minutes, this place had a habit of distorting a person's perception of time due to the trees constantly blocking out the sun and letting it reappear randomly. Evies mother had told her many stories about the Emerald Forest, of how it used to be an inhabited part of Vale and was used for festivals and plays, but was eventually overrun by Grimm and abandoned. Evie could see why they had used this place, despite what it did to your sense of time, it was really rather beautiful. The trees standing tall and proud, the cool air provided by the shade and the smell produced by the trees made everything come together perfectly; but perfection could only last so long before something came to destroy it, and that something was here. A black bear with burning red eyes and white armor covering its head and various other spots of it body stood on the other side of some trees in Evies path. This creature was known as an Ursa, one of the many types of Grimm; she looked around but saw that the forest to her side was dark from a lack of separation in the trees, if Evie went down that path then she could very easily become lost as she wouldn't be able to rely on the sun for directions. It seemed that she had no choice, she had to kill the Ursa to continue on her way.

Pulling out a handgun she had also received, though begrudgingly, at the same time as _Lieben_ and had bitterly named _Hassen_ , she took aim at her target and allowed some of the dust from her glove to seep into the guns grip and even further into the magazine, turning the bullets into a pale white colour and with one last breath, she pulled the trigger.

The bullet struck the Ursa's face and while it did nothing to the armor, it did succeed in covering its eyes in a layer of ice. Evies quickly seized her chance and ran towards the confused Ursa, _Lieben_ at the ready. With one strong swing, _Lieben_ cut cleanly, severing an arm from the beast and causing it to collapse to the ground in a roar of pain; Evie was ready and with one quick strike, she buried _Lieben_ into the base of the Grimm's skull striking just below the armor. She pulled the blade from the creature with a sickening squelch as its lifeless body began to disappear in a haze of black smoke; but Evie had been careless, she had forgotten to check her surroundings before charging in and as such, had failed to notice the second Ursa that was now charging at her.

She braced for the impact, raising her sword in hope that she could at least get off a decent blow before it used her as a chew toy but it never came. Instead something whistled through the air and lodged itself in the beast's eye causing it roar and rear back in pain, eventually falling over; Shocked, Evie barely had time to register a second arrow that came flying from one of the trees and struck the bottom of the beast's jaw, piercing all the way though and causing the creature to go silent.

"That was a close one," said a girls' voice, coming from same direction as the arrows. "I heard a gunshot and thought I wouldn't make it."

"T-Thank y-you," Evie stuttered back to the disembodied voice.

In the direction the voice was coming from, a girl wearing brown and green dropped down from the trees holding a bow.

"No problem, wasn't going to let you get eaten," the girl replied, walking towards Evie, pausing for a moment before she continued her approach. "Guess we're partners now then."

"I-I guess s-so, I'm E-Evie S-Starr," Evie responds back. "T-Thanks again for s-saving my l-life" she added quickly.

"Opal Drake, and like I said, wasn't going to let you get eaten," the girl smiled back while collecting her arrows.

"D-D-D-Drake," Evie stammered heavily, recognizing the name. "Are y-you a part of the D-Drake family."

Evie knew the name because there was a wing at the hospital her mother worked at named after them for a very large donation, but she knew nothing of what the people were really like as everyone often behaved differently behind closed doors.

"You mean that racist, snobbish, ancient Atlas knight family that regard blood and titles to be more important than anything else?" Opal answered Evies thoughts, her voice soaked in venom, though Evie could tell the venom was not aimed at her. "Not anymore."

Understanding that family was obviously a bad subject, Evie stayed away from it as the two girls started to walk off into the forest, heading for the temple and the relic that awaited them.


	5. Initiation (Part 2)

**Chapter 5 - Initiation (Part 2)**

 **Raalm Neeth**

Raalm watched as Opal was sent flying from the cliff, hoping she would be fine, as he prepared himself for launch; he already had a plan in mind for how he was going to land and adjusted the chain on his arm. Seconds later his platform clicked and launched him forward into the air, the wind blowing hard on his face. Raalm used his thumb to unhook the chain from one of the links that secured it in position and let it unwind slightly from his arm, now it stood at roughly two meters in length, he began to spin the chain and released it once he was near enough to a tree. The chain caught a tree limb and held as Raalm used this to change the angle of his momentum and quickly, with a flick of his wrist, freed the chain from the branch and immediately threw it out for another branch. He swung through the trees until he had slowed down enough and allowed himself to spin on a limb a couple of times before landing. Breathing a sigh of relief at the fact it had all worked out as planned, Raalm detached his chain, jumped down from the tree, making a sharp jerking motion with his arm that caused the chain to rewind itself back in position around his arm and hooking just over his thumb and began to walk north.

He had a good idea of where he was going as while he was in the air he had seen a large clearing roughly a mile or two ahead that he figured would be the most likely place for the temple; as he walked he surveyed the forest carefully, making sure to not be caught off guard. Having grown up in the middle of nowhere, Raalm was very used to forests, though they usually were not this dense, and knew that the Grimm could jump out from any shadow or from behind any tree and if you were not paying attention then they would be finished with you before you could even react. Keeping this in mind, he made sure to edge his way slowly through the forest, checking every corner for potential danger. Twenty minutes passed and Raalm has still seen nothing and worse than that was that he feared he had stumbled off course. A large tree that seemed easy to climb lay ahead of him and he decided it was worth a shot to climb it and see where he was. Climbing the tree took longer than he thought it would but as he got to the top he saw that he was still heading the right way and should reach the clearing with the next thirty minutes; however, as he climbed down he saw three creatures below him at the base of the tree, none of them looking at him. Raalm instantly recognized them as Beowolves, large, black malformed wolves with burning red eyes and white armor covering their head and ribs, the most common creature of Grimm but still rather deadly if not handled properly or if a pack is allowed to form. Raalm flicked his wrist once more, lowering part of his chain to cover his knuckle and prepared to fight.

The fall gave him enough force to knock out the first Beowolf on contact, causing it to slump to the ground, not dead but also not a problem for now; the two remaining Beowolves registered what had happened and lunged at Raalm. He sidestepped both of them, one smashing into the tree and the other stopping just short of the same fate, managing to get a little distance between them. The one that avoided the tree lunged once again and this time was greeted to uppercut to the jaw from a fist covered in metal, causing it to yelp and be flung into the air. Not giving it any time to recover, Raalm released his chain and swung it at the airborne Grimm, striking from above and sending it flying into the ground with a sickening thud that knocked the life out of it and caused it to start smoking, only one Beowolf remained standing now and it had already began charging him down. It stopped in front of Raalm and swiped at him with one of its large claws, but Raalm just ducked and rolled between the Grimm's legs; as he rose from the roll, he whipped his chain twice around the Beowolf's neck and pulled hard, forcing the beast onto its back. Unable to get up or find enough leverage to pull away, the Beowolf began to thrash wildly in an attempt to escape, but Raalm would not let it. He placed his foot on the creature's shoulder and pulled with all his might, ripping the Beowolf's head clean off and finally silencing the beast. With those two now dealt with, he walked over to the unconscious one with a short amount of his chain spinning in his hand and one hard strike across the jaw was all it took to reduce the Grimm to smoke; sighing, he pressed on into the woods, not looking back at the vanishing corpses of the three Beowolves for even a second.

 **Garrick Cane**

The panel launched Garrick into the air, pulled his focus away from jokes and more into strategy. He was not worried at all by the speed he was traveling but knew if he didn't take it seriously then he could be hurt; snapping to attention, he pulled his great mace called _Berserker_ from his back and twisted the handle to the left. Two prongs of the giant mace head curled backwards slightly, now sticking straight out from the side of the weapon, and the rest of them pushed upwards and closer together, all forming a sharp spear with a stomp guard. Garrick rested his feet on the stomp guard and angled the spear towards the trees, bracing for an impact that would definitely hurt a little. The spear goes straight through, smashing the tree to pieces, and another and two more before finally, the multiple impacts had reduced his speed enough for his spear to get jammed five inches into a final tree, bringing him to a complete stop and, positioned slightly upright, he managed to stay holding onto his weapon. Looking down, he saw that the drop to the ground was not too far and slammed his foot against the tree making it shake and ripping the spear from its grip, causing him to fall six feet to the ground and land perfectly.

"Sorry birdies," he muttered to the birds, which now flew above the trees that he had ripped through with his landing strategy.

Garrick saw small clearing up ahead, the walk took a couple of minutes but when he reached the clearing he had a perfect view of the sun and was able to figure out which was north was. Twisting the handle of his weapon, Garrick turned it back into the preferred great mace and placed it onto his back, setting off to find the north temple, looking for any Grimm he could fight along the way. He walked for at least an hour before he managed to spot some Boarbatusks, rather small boar like Grimm with large bone tusks and heavily armored backs, to his right. He would have preferred something a little bigger but Grimm were Grimm, and he would take what he could get. Garrick drew his weapon and charged; catching one of them with a massive downwards strike and his weapon, flattening the creature before it had even seen him. The others had seen him though and Garrick swung his mace at the first one to charge him sending it flying into a tree, causing the tree to smash apart and fall on it, also flattening it. Two more remained and charging him together but Garrick was too strong, catching one of them by a tusk, he picked it up and slammed it into the other before smashing it down onto the ground repeatedly until the tusk broke and the Grimm began to smoke. The last Boarbatusk jumped in the air and began to spin in place, Garrick raised his mace and lined up the shot; the creature now raced towards him and Garrick swung his mace, smashing the Boarbatusk and sending it flying through the air and eventually dropping into the trees roughly thirty meters away. Garrick let out a sigh and ran after it, he had to make sure it was dead.

Running through the forest he heard distant gunshots, people having finally found confrontation on their way to the temple, but he continued running; he had to find that Boarbatusk before it got the chance to hurt anyone else. Looking up, he saw smashed branches where the beast had re-entered the trees and turned to follow them eventually coming to a clearing where the Boarbatusk lay smoking on the ground at the foot of a familiar face.

 **Raalm Neeth**

"Who killed it," was the first thing Garrick said.

"It was dead when it fell," Raalm replied honestly, still a little shocked from what had just happened.

He had just reached the clearing when he herd smashing to his side, he figured it was a Grimm that had spotted him but was greeted to a flying pig that landed at his feet, blowing dust onto his shoes, and seconds later Garrick had come running out of the woods from the same direction.

Raalm took a second to take Garricks new appearance in. he was wearing and dark blue metal armor over his upper half with an engraving of 2 black bears fighting on the front. Both his shoulders and arms were covered in the same metal and the right shoulder was studded, Raalm guessed that was for charging an opponent. Black jeans covered his legs with parts cut out and replaced with silver chain-link and black boots covered his feet. He had a large, black, two handed mace in his hands with what looked like a trigger just below the head. Raalm had no idea what that thing fired but he knew he didn't want to be anywhere near it when it did.

"Awesome," he said smiling. "You got a partner?"

"I guess I do now," Raalm replied with a small smile. He had hoped to be pair with Opal but Garrick was a nice guy.

"Sweet, know which way the temple is?" Garrick asked. "I got turned around chasing that thing," he added, pointing at the Boarbatusk.

"Yeah it's not much further, about ten minutes that way," Raalm replies pointing at the way he was walking before the boar had interrupted him.

"Good, we should get going then," he said pulling a packet of something out of his pocket. "Want some honeycomb," he said offering Raalm some.

Raalm shakes his head and starts walking towards the temple, Garrick now at his side. _This mission is definitely about to get noisier_ , Raalm thought to himself.

"So partner, I guess we should learn somethings about each other, right?" Garrick said, less than a minute after Raalm had finished his thought.

"Sure, what do you want to know?" Raalm sighed back, though not out of frustration, but out of sadness for all the silence that he would never have from this point on.

"Basics for now I guess, where do you come from? What you like to do?" Garrick asked.

"I'm from a small village outside of Vale called Lenter and I enjoy reading mostly," Raalm replied. "What about you?"

"I'm from Vacuo originally but my family moved to Vale when I was five, don't really have a favorite thing to do, to be honest I mainly do whatever seems fun at the time," he replied cheerfully.

 _Sounds about right_ , Raalm thought to himself. "What made your family move," he asked, genuinely a little curious.

"Not really sure, my mom just says that Vale was better, but I guess from the way she used to talk about it with my dad, something happened where my mom worked and they though it was best we moved." Garrick replied eagerly.

"Used to talk about it?" Raalm asked, having picked up on the past tense. "Is your dad not around anymore?"

"No he uhh… he died about four years ago," said Garrick, suddenly looking a little less cheerful.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to bring up bad memories," Raalm quickly apologizes.

"Its fine," Garrick says. "He was a good man, a huntsman that did his very best to help everyone he could," he added with a smile.

"Sounds like a great man if you ask me," said Raalm.

"That he was," he replied, going quiet for a couple of minutes.

Not wanting to interrupt whatever memory Garrick was reliving, he looked ahead and saw that the temple was now within sight. The temple was a large circle of stone with one collapsed grey stone wall at the far side, just in front of that were twenty pedestals and on each one stood a colored dagger, some of the daggers were already missing, taken by students that had made it there before them and leaving only six left to choose from. Looking around at them he saw that all of them were a different colour. Garrick walked over to a red dagger and picked it up, showing it to Raalm.

"Guessing you would be cool with red," he asks, sliding it into the silver sheath that lay beside it as Raalm nodded his head.

"That was easier than expected, I thought there would be a huntsmen protecting this place from us or something," said Raalm as Garrick walked back over to him.

"Oh well, guess it means we can get back to lunch early," Garrick replied, smiling at the idea of food.

"I guess," Raalm said turning to walk back into the forest but instead, seeing a Grimm flying straight at them.

Garrick pushed Raalm out of the way and quickly dived to the left, narrowly avoiding the griffins claws. The griffin flew back up into the air before they could get back up and began to circle then. Upon closer inspection, Raalm could see that this was no basic griffin as it was more armor that feathers. White armor covered the creature's legs, head and even underneath the wings. As is swooped down once more he got a look at its back before having to jump to the side. Thick white armor covered it entirely except for the wings which were still black and exposed, even the tail had spikes of white armor sticking out, this was an alpha Grimm. Alphas were the toughest of their kind, often heavily armored, a lot stronger and came in every variety of the smaller Grimm; from Boarbatusks to Griffins. Raalm sized up their options and looked around as the griffin took off again to circle them, seeing the trigger mechanism on Garricks weapon.

"Can whatever your mace fires hit that thing," Raalm half shouts.

"No, it's to agile," he said back. "What about you?"

"No, we're going to have to try and lose it in the trees, we're not equipped to take that thing down," said Raalm.

"I agree," Garrick replied, running towards the forest.

As the enter the forest they break into a run, both keeping up with each other and soon they come to the clearing where they made ran into each other earlier. Raalm and Garrick looked up and saw the Griffin still overhead, watching their every move and that's when something hit Raalm square in the chest. Something small that bounced off of him and landed on the on the ground. Raalm looked down and saw a girl with pale blonde hair and pink eyes looking up at him out of breath. Clearly she had been running from something too.


	6. Initiation (Part 3)

**A/N**

 **So I just saw that Blacsparrow gave me a shout-out in their newest chapter of Must Kill: May Zedong (Great story, I would recommend chacking that out) and decided I needed to upload this a little earlier in the day than I usually do so that anyone coming over from there (Hello btw) will be able to see the ending of the first ark, I should also say that this is the shortest of the arks too. Once again, massive thanks to Blacsparrow for all the help and feedback. So that's enough from me, please enjoy :)**

* * *

 **Chapter 6 – Initiation (Part 3)**

 **Opal Drake**

Opal walked through the forest with Evie trailing slightly behind, looking curiously at the red dagger they had retrieved from the temple. After they met and teamed up, the trip to the temple had been rather uneventful, they hadn't seen any Grimm or any students. Evie had been rather quite the entire trip since she had asked about Opal's family, though she did not mind the silence since it gave her time to think and there was only one thought that occupied Opal's head. How was she going to cope with a partner that that made her heart flutter for the next four years of her life. _Tell her? No that was ridiculous, it would just make things awkward. Ignore it? No that was stupid too. Ugh why did I have to see this girl first, it could have been anyone; Raalm, Garrick or just some other boy, but nope it had to be the most beautiful girl I have ever seen_ , she thought, cursing her luck. Opal had been openly homosexual her entire life, she had never once hidden who she was or what she liked so the idea of hiding now seemed strange to her, she had never even hidden it from her parents, though that was part of the reason they had disowned her.

The Drake knight family was not very accepting of anything that was "against the norm" and to them, that's something Opal very much was. For as long as she could remember, she watched her family insult pretty much everything, they treated Faunus like slaves, working people as less than themselves and viewed anyone with different views on such matters as scum. That included Opal herself. She had never shared their beliefs, she had Faunus friends and preferred to help the staff in their house rather than sit by and watch them suffer; in any other family, this would have made the parents proud but in her house, this only lead to Opal being ostracized. She was banned from going to any family events and even uninvited to family meals, being forced to eat in her room, though none of this really bothered her too much. She knew that her family were horrible people and spent most of her time at her best friend Clara's house. One day however when she was fifteen, Clara's mom had gone out of town and she came to stay at Opal's house for the night, her parents not caring as long as they stayed in her room, and things had gotten a little heated, leading to her kissing Clara, and as luck would have it her father opened her door at that exact minute. That was the final straw for him, thinking he would be able to one day marry her off to some other family was probably the only thing that made him keep her around and with that hope finally shattered he spent the night shouting at her before finally kicking her out on the streets. Opal had gone to live with her grandmother after that, someone else who didn't share the family beliefs, and began to lead her own life.

Deep in thought about what she was going to do about her current problem, she almost didn't hear Evie shout.

"OPAL LOOK OUT," Evie shouted, running to push her out of the way as a giant yellow stinger came zooming towards her.

Being too wrapped up in her own thoughts, Opal had missed the Deathstalker that now stood in front of them but it did not take her long to regain her focus. She dodged to the side of the stinger, grabbed Evies arm and took off to running back towards to the temple, they had passed a clearing earlier that would give them a better chance of defeating this giant armored scorpion; if they even could, Opal knew that her arrows would hardly dent the creature's armor and highly doubted that Evie had something that could since the only weapon she carried was a small sword and a handgun. Evie took the hint and began to run alongside Opal, surprisingly quick for such a little girl.

"GO, I'm right behind you," Opal shouted, smacking the button to switch quivers and pulling out an arrow with a bright, white feather and with a quick spin she readied the arrow and let it fly, hitting the Deathstalker square in the face and releasing a flash of light that blinded it for a second. She continued to run, Evie a couple of meters ahead of her, and could see the trees thinning, they were close to the clearing. Behind her she heard trees being knocked down as the Deathstalker chased them, but she was already where she wanted to be. As she exited into the clearing she saw Evie sitting on the ground and in front of her stood Raalm and Garrick.

"Woah there ladies, what are you running from?" Garrick said straight faced while Raalm looked up and the sky.

Opal followed his gaze and saw a Griffin circling the clearing. "Deathstalker, that griffin yours?" Opal replied out of breath.

"Yeah, met it at the temple," Raalm said before looking at Opal and Garrick and then to the Evie's handgun, which she was now holding before turning back to Garrick. "Can you handle a Deathstalker?" he asked Garrick, who nodded back.

Opal quickly caught on to what Raalm was saying and understood.

"We can handle the Griffin, right Evie?" she replied, accepting the tradeoff.

"More than the Deathstalker," said Evie finally getting up.

"Good," Raalm said hurriedly, as the Deathstalker came smashing into the clearing. "Let's do this then."

Opal and Evie ran to the left side of the clearing as Raalm and Garrick went to the right, each facing their new opponents.

"Bring it down and keep it distracted," Opal shouted at Evie who gave a nod in return. "I'll make sure it stays down."

Running towards the trees, Opal flipped a switch on the side of _Estía_ , causing the bow's limbs to separate into three separate limbs that were connected in the middle, a thin piece of strong, flexible metal that usually keeps all the limbs together hung loosely, connecting the three limbs to each other. The thick bowstring unraveled and set into place, a string for each pair of limbs. With her weapon now in multi-shot mode, Opal started to climb into the trees as Evie unloaded a magazine into the Griffin's underbelly, doing nothing to the creature but managing to grab its attention. The Griffin dived straight at Evie who dodged to the left and swung her sword at it as she raised but it just glanced off the creature's armor as it whipped its tail around at her. She jumped backwards and unloaded another few shots into the creatures face, this time the bullets seemed to be crackling with electricity. The bullets did no damage but creature flinched back from the small electrical shocks the bullets delivered and Opal saw her chance, the wings were outstretched and it black feathers are exposed. She pulled three arrows from her quiver, two with red feathers and one with purple, she readied them, pulled back and released the two red feathered arrows. They strike, one in each wing, and as they did the dust inside released and exploded, ripping the wings from the beast and causing it to rear back onto it hind legs in pain, catching Evie with one of its front legs and making her spin to the ground. As the Griffin put all four legs back on the ground, Opal released the third arrow with the purple feather, which struck the beast on the head and released a small amount of gravity dust, causing the beast to be slammed face first into the ground. Opal was out of the tree and running at it before the beast could even pick itself up, slinging her bow over her shoulder and pulling _Timí_ and _Éleos_ from their sheaths, she ran up the side of the Griffin and jammed the daggers into the fresh wounds where its wings were seconds ago.

"EVIE NOW," Opal shouted as the Griffin reared back once again.

Evie had already stood up a now charged at the beast, she swung her sword at the beast's neck and cleanly severed the Griffins head from its body and making it fall backwards. Opal jumped of its back before its body crushed her and landed next to her partner. Both of the girls breathed a sigh of relief and turn to see how the boys had managed.

 **Garrick Cane**

Garrick charged towards the Deathstalker, taking the lead and smacking one of the Deathstalker's pincers with _Berserker_ as Raalm's chain come flying out and smacked the Deathstalker's tail that had been plunging down towards Garrick, with two of the three problems averted, he swung his mace down with as much force as he could and slammed it into the beast's head, it seemed to feel it but it was still far from enough to stop it. With a sudden lunge forward, it pushed its body into Garrick, forcing him to take a step back; but this was a big mistake, the Deathstalker's pincer grabbed Garrick and threw him back a few meters while it slammed the point of its tail down into Raalm's arm. Garrick stood up and saw that Raalm's chain was wrapped around his arm protecting him from the blow, though the force of it had pushed him to his knees. As Garrick was about to run in he saw Raalm rip something from his metal backpack, causing his chain to turn a bright red and the Deathstalker to recoil in pain. In a flash of red he released his chain and attached the thing from his back pack to the end of it which he swung it at the tail. As the chain arced towards to Deathstalker, fire spewed from the end and lit the surrounding tree's alight, until it finally spun around the end of the tail and jammed itself into the yellow tip. Garrick twisted the handle of his mace to the right, causing the handle to retract and all of the maces prongs to pull backwards, covering Garricks arm and allowing him to reach the trigger. Raalm let out a roar as he ripped the poisonous yellow tip from the tail, causing the beast to stagger backwards in pain and turned to see Garrick pointing what looked like an arm mounted cannon straight at him.

"MOVE," Garrick shouted, pulling the trigger as Raalm slung his weapon at a tree and pulled himself away.

The blast was enough to push Garrick back a step as massive burst of blue energy erupted from the end of his weapon, heading straight for the Deathstalker which tried to block the blast with one of its pincers. The energy didn't care and ripped right through the pincer, turning it to dust, but it had managed to take most of the blast, leaving only enough energy left to cause some large cracks in the armor on the beast's head. Both Raalm and Garrick charged in but were swatted away by its remaining pincer.

"I'll hold the pincer, you finish it," Raalm said as he got to his feet and ran at the creature once more.

Garrick twisted the handle on his cannon hard to the left and it sprang into a full length spear with a stomp guard once more. He focused all of his strength on his feet and launched himself into the air and with a loud grunt, he threw his spear down at the crack in the Deathstalker's armor, Raalm having already restrained the pincer by attaching it to a nearby tree with his chain. The spear pierced through but the armor managed to protect it enough from being fatal, until Garrick came crashing down on the stomp guard, sending the spear straight through the creature's head and lodging it into the ground. The Deathstalker went limp and collapsed lifelessly to the floor, Garrick's spear still lodged through its head as it began to turn to smoke.

"A little help?" Garrick asked Raalm, trying to pull his spear free.

"Sure," Raalm replied, jumping up to help.

With both of them, they are able to pull the spear from the ground and start to make their way over to the girl when Garrick heard it. Clicking. He knew that sound straight away, he was finally about to come face to face with the same type of Grimm that had killed his father.

"We have another big problem incoming," Garrick quickly said to Raalm.

 **Raalm Neeth**

Raalm looked at where Garrick was looking and immediately saw what Garrick meant as a huge fifteen-foot-long centipede with nasty looking serrated pincers came scuttling into the clearing and looked at the four of them. It was covered in white spiked armor, not a single part of the new creature's back was exposed and Raalm had no idea how they would kill this thing, all he knew was that everyone needed to be in the correct positions.

"Opal, get in the trees and provide cover fire," he shouted.

She followed his order immediately as the others charged in to find a possible weakness to this thing, but the creature was fast and smart. It ran straight for Opal, climbing the trees and catching her in its pincers and throwing her into a nearby tree. As she hit, Raalm saw a green light flicker around her. Opal's aura, a manifestation of her soul, had protected her from the force of the impact but it was still clearly strong enough to have knocked the wind out of her, meaning that she couldn't run as the creature ran towards her. Raalm started to charge in but Garrick was already there, slamming his shoulder into the overgrown centipede, knocking it off course and causing it to lean to one side, giving Raalm a view of it weakness. Its entire underbelly was free of armor and all they had to do was get a clean shot.

"Garrick, Evie, keep it busy for a moment," Raalm shouted, running over to check on Opal. "Are you okay?" he asked as he got there.

"Yeah, just winded me a bit is all," she replied, slowly standing up.

"Good, do you have anything in that quiver you can use to lift that thing into the air?" He asked, having seen a little of her earlier fight while he was knocked on his ass.

"Uhh… maybe, I have some wind and gravity arrows left but it might take all I have left of them to lift it," she said. "Even then, I can't promise I can get it more than five meters up."

"Five meters should be fine," Raalm replied quickly, seeing Garrick get knocked back into a tree and stand back up. "Give me a signal when you're ready."

Opal gave a nod a began climbing into the trees while Raalm ran back into the fight to join Garrick and Evie. Garrick had taken to smacking his mace against the creature's legs though it did very little but Evie was focusing her fire on the ground, slowing the huge centipede down by causing little pools of ice wherever her bullets hit that kept it from picking up any real speed. Raalm swung his chain at some of its many legs and pulled hard.

"Evie, we need to keep it still so Opal can get a shot," Raalm said to Evie. "Garrick, reload and get ready."

They both follow his orders and began to change up their attacks, Evie aiming at its face, attempting to cover its eyes as well as what she was doing to the ground while Garrick fell back and started to reload by ripping a large, burned out container from his mace and slamming a new one in. Raalm was busy attempting to tie up as many legs as he possibly could when he heard shout that she was ready from the tree's.

"DO IT," he yelled back, still attached to the Grimm.

Three arrows came zooming out and landed beneath it, two purple and one almost see-through. The two purple ones activated first sending each end of the centipede up two feet in the air before the third activated. Gale force winds erupted from it sending the beast flying at least six meters into the air. Raalm released his chain in favor of slinging at the centipede's mouth and pulling down so that Garrick could get a clear view of its whole underbelly.

"NOW," Raalm shouted over the sound of the wind coming from the arrow.

Garrick was ready, weapon in cannon form and already primed, he pulled the trigger and released the massive amount of blue energy for a second time. It struck the underbelly of the beast and continued to travel through, losing power along the way but turning at least two thirds of the creature to dust. The armor of it came crashing to the ground with a loud thud, already beginning to smoke. Garrick and Evie both dropped to their knees, breathing heavily after having taken a couple of hits from the creature.

"That went better than expected," Garrick breathed, clutching his side. "Can we get back to school so I can have lunch now," he added.

"I guess we've earned that much," said Opal as she emerged from the trees and helped Garrick to his feet.

"I think we all earned a three course meal for that," Raalm joked while helping Evie to her feet.

After a minute of rest, the four of them set off back to school, relics in hand and eager to fill their stomach before the assembly later tonight.

 **Later that day**

Raalm stood next to Opal, Garrick and Evie to the side of the Amphitheatre's stage, waiting for their names to be called. Only twenty-eight of the forty students had passed the initiation test, the rest having been saved by professional huntsmen and huntresses that had been watching them the entire time. Raalm doubted Ozpin would really let the students die but in a world where death is always just around the corner anyway, he couldn't be sure. The passing students had now been called up to the stage and sorted into teams of four based on which color dagger they have retrieved from the forest, so far three teams had been called up and given their team name and leader. Team Argent (ARGT), led by an average looking boy called Arnold, Team Violet (VLET), led by a small girl named Valarie and Team Marron (MARN), led by a short but powerful looking boy named Mark, Raalm and his team were up next. As MARN left the stage, Raalm, Opal, Garrick and Evie began there climb up the steps.

"Raalm Neeth, Opal Drake, Garrick Cane and Evie Starr," Ozpins called out to the audience of older students. "The four of you retrieved the red daggers, from this day forth you will work together as Team Rouge (ROGE), led by Raalm Neeth."

Raalm looked at Ozpin. He had Hoped that Opal or Garrick would have been the team leader since they had done the most during their encounters in the emerald forest. He looked at the rest of his new team and saw them smiling back at him, none of them looked surprised. Raalm walked of the stage and began to think of what this now meant, he was now in charge of three people for the next four years, he would have to come up with strategies, conduct training exercises and make sure his team did the best they could. They would help to a certain extent but ultimately, the final decision was down to him.

"Don't worry, you were a great leader in the forest," Garrick said, putting a hand on Raalm's shoulder. "We trust you to lead us," he added with a smile while Opal and Evie gave a nod of their head in agreement.

Raalm was still not sure if they should put their trust in him but he didn't say anything, he simply lowered his head and made his way over to Glynda who was giving out class timetables and room numbers to the other teams.

"Team ROGE, you will be on the third floor in room 3B," she said as they approached, handing them a slip of paper each. "These are your classes."

They all looked down at the slip of paper and saw a timetable printed onto them, classes started tomorrow at 9am and finished at 4pm, their first class was Grimm studies with Professor Port and was one classes Raalm found himself looking forward to, the other being history with Professor Oobleck. The took his scroll out and quickly entered his timetable into it and returned it to his pocket.

"Anyone else ready for bed?" He sighed, looking at his team.

"Well, I still need to put my pajamas on but I don't mind going without," Garrick said, sliding up to Raalm and running his hand across his chest and causing Evie and Opal to erupt in laughter.

"In your dreams," Raalm replied, walking away but finally smiling.

"How did you know, are you psychic?" Garrick shouted after Raalm.

"I'm quite t-tired too, s-see you guys b-back at the r-room," Evie stuttered, following Raalm.

Raalm made his way back to the dorms and quickly found to the team's new room, unlocked the door with his scroll and stepped inside. Four single beds sat next to each other with enough space to walk between each. The walls were bare and attached to the side was a bathroom, he was about to go in and take a shower when Evie walked through the door behind him.

"You can go in the shower before me," Raalm told the girl a little awkwardly, he knew enough about Opal and Garrick to call them friends but this girl was still a stranger.

"T-Thank you, are you s-sure you d-don't want to g-go first?" She replied.

"Its fine, I can wait," he said, walking to claim a bed in the corner as Evie grabbed some clothes, entered the bathroom and locked the door.

Raalm laid back on his bed and thought about the day's events, the battles he had fought, the new team he was in and most importantly, being made the teams leader. He closed his eye and tried to think about all of it but all that washed over him was sleep, the last thing he heard before falling into slumber was the taps running a bath.


	7. End Of Term

**Chapter 7 - End of Term**

 **Raalm Neeth**

Raalm opened his eyes and got to his feet. _It's always that bloody greatshield_ , he thought to himself, having bounced off it for the third time. He was in the middle of a sparring match between teams ROGE and ARGT and his team was struggling to get past the others excellent defense. Team ARGT had three shield users, two of them being normal shields and one holding a massive, metal greatshield that always seemed to absorb whatever they threw at it. The two normal shield users, twin sisters that Raalm had never learned the names of, were and rather aggressive but very skilled at bringing their shields around to block at the last minute and the greatshield user, who Raalm believed was called Arnold, would cover the final member of their team, who wielded an assault rifle that would transform into a sword for close combat work, the two of them working perfectly together. Raalm looked around for the position of his team. Opal was currently engaged in a battle of blades with one of the twins, flashes of silver dancing around them as they moved so fast it was hard for Raalm to keep up, not surprising as Opal was ranked first in the years leaderboard and the other girl ranked second. Evie was occupied with the other twin, nowhere near as fast but using _Erida_ to great effect to turn the area around her to ice and deliver small shocks to her opponents arm through her shield. That left Arnold and the last team member to him and Garrick, who was smashing his mace down and causing as much damage as possible to the floor in an attempt to slow down Arnolds movements. Checking his vambrace he saw that Garrick's remaining aura was below half, now was the time to turn this match around. He unleashed his chain and ran towards Arnold.

"Entwine," Raalm half shouted to Garrick as he ran past him, slinging his chain at Arnold, only for it to be blocked again; though it's not like he expected any different.

As Garrick fell back Raalm wrapped his chain back around his arm and ripped _Wildfire_ from his backpack, attaching it to the chain and began his attack. With fire now spewing from his hand, he carved wide arks with his kunai, which caused Arnold to cover his eyes from the brightness of the flame and miss Garrick's retreat. Raalm knew that Arnold would notice in a couple of seconds so he concentrated on extending that time as much as possible with a few quick punches forcing him to keep his guard up and then a fire-spewing slash from _Wildfire_ to block his vision, still he only managed to buy Garrick a couple of seconds before Arnold noticed what had happened.

"TINA, DON'T LET HIM NEAR THAT GIRL," he bellowed to the girl fighting Evie. But it was too late, Garrick was already there.

With a sudden forward thrust of his shield, Arnold knocked Raalm backwards and with a nod to the gunman behind him, ran off to fight Garrick; transforming his greatshield into two thick clubs as he ran.

 _Perfect_ , Raalm thought to himself while smiling at the gunman. All had gone to plan. He ran at the boy, dodging bullets or blocking them with his chain. The boy turned his assault rifle into a sword as Raalm got closer and prepared for a close up battle. Raalm swing his chain at him only for it to be parried away, as expected, and create an opening for Raalm to attack with a kick straight to the boy's side, causing him to stagger. Raalm didn't let up, following up with a quick punch to the boy's knee to throw him further off balance, until he saw the opening he had been waiting for, the boy's sword arm was above his head from where he had stumbled and his chest was completely exposed. Raalm slammed his fist into the boy's chest, the force sending him stumbling backwards, but not out of reach; Raalm slung his chain around the boy's chest and dragged him back in close, delivering a powerful punch to his stomach before spinning around to his back and shoving his knee into the base of his spine, lifting him into the air only for Raalm to immediately grab him by the neck and shoved him into the ground, causing his aura to flicker, and eliminating him from the match. The whole fight took a couple of seconds at most but not wasting any time Raalm turned to look how the rest of his team were doing.

Garrick had reached Evie and was now fighting with renewed vigor, the two of them in perfect sync as a faint white haze surrounded them both. Raalm ran towards them as Garrick smacked his mace into the shield of the girl Evie was fighting, sending her flying to the side, though she didn't stay down for very long before getting back up and rejoining the fight. Deciding that Garrick and Evie had it under control, Raalm turned and ran to help Opal who was still locked in a vicious dance with her partner. Running straight at them, he let out a short whistle, notifying Opal that he was coming to help her, and with a quick flourish of her blades she managed to get a little distance between her and her opponent to allow for Raalm to get into the fray; shoving his left shoulder into the girls shield and leading into an uppercut to knock it away for a second. Opal took full advantage of the chance and, with her bow ready, fired a white feathered arrow straight at the girl, which released a bright flash of light the instant it landed. Raalm already had his eyes close, expecting Opal to use her favored type of arrow and brought his chain covered right fist crunching into the girl's cheek, knocking her off balance, allowing Opal to sink her knee into the girl's already abused face, eliminating her from the match. Now only two remained.

"Eruption," Raalm said to Opal quickly before running off to help Garrick who was slowly getting worn down, even with Evie boosting his aura and helping however she could.

Raalm saw Evie notice him and Opal as he ran towards them and she gave a nod, knowing exactly what to do. The white aura intensified for a second and Garrick responded with a smile. He threw a punch at the twin, hitting her shield and sending her flying into Arnold as Evie fired of a couple of ice imbued bullets that hit the ground and encased their feet, keeping them stationary. Evie fell back a little and dropped to one knee, a look of concentration on her face as she focused solely on her semblance and Raalm also gained the white haze and immediately felt connected to all of them. He looked at his vamcrace and saw the fourth light fade to dark orange as Garrick ran up to the trapped pair and raised _Berserker_ while Raalm flung his chain at the mace, jamming _Wildfire_ between the prongs. As he swung down, a purple feathered arrow struck the head of the mace, releasing gravity dust than sent it down with tremendous force. Arnold saw what was happening and let his clubs form the greatshield once more, pushing it in front of his teammate, but it was pointless. Garrick's mace slammed into the ground with enough force to rupture the power cell to his cannon, releasing a wave of energy, reduced by the prongs of the mace so as to not cause serious damage, that rushed towards them with flame from _Wildfire_ flowing within. The energy hit the shield and was too much for it to withstand, Arnold buckled and the ice at his feet shattered as both him and the girl were sent flying backwards, thier aura flickering off and eliminating both of them from the match.

Raalm gave a sigh of relief as the white haze faded and looked at the four lights on his right vambrace, three were orange and the second one was solid yellow. It seemed Opal was the only one with still over half, the rest having taken some pretty heavy hits. Garrick had already crossed the stage and helped Arnold and Tina to their feet, asking if they were ok. Both of them nodded and gave him a smile though both were visibly and understandably a little shaken up. Team ROGE had only managed to perfect that move a couple of days ago, the first time they tried it, they ended up completely reducing an entire side wall of the training room to dust because Garrick had been unable to keep hold of his mace, and as a result the full unrestrained energy was released. That one had earned them a weeks worth of detention from Glynda and were told that they had to practice outside from that moment on; Fortunately, summer was almost there so the weather was never really too bad.

"Garrick, if you don't hurry up and shower then you're going to miss lunch," Raalm shouted to his partner while walking to the changing rooms.

"Alright, I'm coming," Garrick replied, his round bear ears had perked up slightly at the word lunch.

Raalm made his way to the changing rooms and began to strip down, turning on the shower, that was always immediately warm and stepped underneath it while thinking on the past year. The team had improved immensely since initiation, though that was helped by the fact that Opal was no longer as embarrassed around Evie and Evie herself had begun to feel more confident in her own abilities, therefore becoming a little more outgoing; though she still had her stutter which Garrick had a habit of teasing her about and making it worse from time to time. Garrick and Evie had become rather close in the past year even to the point of Garrick calling her his little human sister, a title that Evie was very happy with. Himself and Garrick had also become a lot closer than he originally thought they would, Raalm often being dragged away from his reading to be involved in whatever scheme Garrick had cooked up at the time. Opal however, while she got along with everyone, the only person who she had really opened up to was Raalm. Raalm was the only one who truly knew everything that had gone down with her family and was the only one who could find her whenever she disappeared to be alone for a few hours. Raalm also knew about the time she had tried to tell Evie that she liked her and somehow ended up kissing her, though no-one talked about that as the following week after it happened was a very awkward time for the team as Opal would run away whenever Evie entered the room. Thankfully though Evie had eventually managed to sit her down and say that while Opal was a really nice girl, she just didn't swing that way. Raalm didn't hear this conversation but he assumed there was much more stuttering and gentler phrasing involved. Drama aside, Raalm had found the year to be quite enjoyable.

Stepping out of the shower, he began to dry himself off and walked over to his locker to get his clothes when he realized that he was alone, no other showers were running which could only mean one thing. Rushing over to his locker, he quickly opened it and saw exactly what he had expected to see. Nothing. Garrick had stolen his clothes again. This had become an almost weekly event now. Garrick would steal his clothes and shove them into someone else's locker, keeping track of how long it took for him to make it to lunch. Raalm would say something but he secretly enjoyed the challenge and always tried to beat his record, though he did put his foot down the time Garrick had hung them in the hallway connecting the changing rooms, forcing him to walk outside into a crowd of people in nothing but a towel to retrieve them. This time however it didn't take him to long to find them, as they were in a locker that was only three down from his, and put them on. He took one last look in the mirror and ran his hand through the blonde streak in his hair before exiting the changing room and heading for the cafeteria.

The cafeteria was busy as usual; Beacon always served amazing food so people rarely missed any of the designated meal times. Four tables extended across the length of the room and at the very end was a counter where student could choose whatever they wanted to eat, most of the time whatever you wanted would be there. The building itself was big enough to hold twice the amount of student that attended Beacon and all the staff, with walls that were more window than stone. Finding his team, Raalm sat down and helped himself to one of the plates of sausages that they had brought back to their part of the table, they had also brought ham, cheese, bread and apples, though Raalm figured it was Evie who had grabbed the apples.

"Ten minutes, not bad," Garrick said as Raalm sat down. "Still not as good as your record though."

"Did you hide his clothes again," Opal interrupted while shaking her. "Why don't you do it to him?" She said, turning to Raalm.

"No point, he'd sniff them out in a heartbeat," he replied with a smile at Garrick.

"You see, you think that's an insult," said Garrick, waving a sausage at Raalm and pulling out a small jar of honey which was only supposed to be available in the morning.

"Where did you get that?" Opal sighed, knowing that he had eaten his morning one already.

"I charmed the lunch lady," he replied with a wink.

"Oh please, Raalm has more charm than you do," Opal said in a tired voice, though she was definitely enjoying teasing Garrick.

"Hey… What did I do?" Raalm responded while Evie and Garrick chuckled at the surprised look on his face. Opal wasn't wrong; while he didn't really care about dating, his ability with women was virtually none existent as most saw him as rather cold or distant since he preferred to be alone with his thoughts.

"Anyway," Garrick said, changing the subject. "The our first year is finished and holidays start tomorrow, what's everyone doing? Personally I'm going to be working in my mom's store and making up for every day that I haven't seen my girlfriend"

"I-I'm helping my mum," Evie replied with a smile. "We're going t-to the outside v-villages with some huntsmen, just to do some check-ups and make sure everyone is h-healthy."

"Maybe I will see you then since I'm going home for the holidays, if you go to Lenter then come find me," Raalm replied to Evie, who nodded back. "What about you Opal, you going to your grandmother's?"

"No, she's out of town on business so it looks like I will be staying here," she said, looking sadly at her sandwich.

"You could always come with me home with me," Raalm offered after a minute of silence. "It's not as nice as Beacon but at least you would have a friend."

"No its fine, I wouldn't want to impose on your time with your family," she replied quickly, though she seemed glad that he had offered.

"It's not an imposition, my family would love to meet you," Raalm countered. "I could probably convince my sister to give you the top bunk, though you might have to teach her how to shoot a bow, she loves them but mom won't let her anywhere near one unless she's with a professional."

"Are you sure?" Opal replied, smiling as Raalm gave a nod of his head. "I guess I will come then, but I will need to make sure it's okay with the school first."

"Awesome, I will let my mom know you are coming then," Raalm said, grabbing an apple and standing up. "Since it's a half day, I'm going to call my mom and then I'm going to go and study for a while, I'll be in the library if you need me."

Raalm walked out of the cafeteria and began to head towards the library. If he was honest with himself, he was glad Opal was coming since he would actually have a friend this summer.


	8. End Of Term (Part 2)

**Chapter 8 – End of Term (Part 2)**

 **Opal Drake**

Opal made her way to the library to give Raalm the good news, having received permission from Glynda after she had called up Opal's grandmother. It was quite a walk from the CCTS but eventually she arrived and found Raalm sitting at a table amongst a stack of books about Grimm and the history of the kingdoms, a writing pad laid out in front of him.

"Hey, I got permission from Glynda," Opal said, as she sat down opposite him and pulled a book titled _The History of Vacuo_ towards her and inspected it.

"Awesome," he replied, looking up from his writing pad. "Mom is looking forward to meeting you, do you need any help packing tonight?"

"Nope, I will be fine, I don't have many clothes anyway," she smiled back. "Sooo, guessing I will have to help out with the farms and stuff while I'm there?"

"Not really, better to leave that to the people who know what their doing," Raalm teased back. "Besides, as predicted my sister will only give you the top bunk if you teach her how to shoot, so that could be your job for the summer."

"That seems like a worthwhile trade to me," she smiled back. Despite her reservations, she was actually looking forward to getting outside the kingdom and being back in nature for a couple of weeks.

The two of them sat there for a couple of hours, both studying and comparing notes, after a while Opal looked at the clock and saw that it was almost 9pm and decided that she should get back to the dorm and start packing.

"How are we getting there actually?" Opal asked while packing up her stuff.

"Well I need to take Cassie back, I can keep most of my clothes in the lockers here until we get back so there should be enough space for you if you want to join me," Raalm answered, still studying _How to kill a Grimm._ "Or you could take an airship down to Vale and get a ride to Lenter."

"I'll join you," Opal replied, looking forward to riding on Cassie again. Raalm let her take Cassie out whenever she wanted to and she had spent a lot of time with that horse over the past year. "How long will it take to get there?"

"Well it's right on the edge of the Nameless Lands so roughly nine or ten hours once we leave Vale, probably longer depending on how many times we have to stop," he said, still not looking up from his book.

Nodding her head, Opal packed the last of her textbooks and left Raalm to study in peace. She knew that he didn't mind the company but still, extended periods of time around people made him a little grouchy, though he always seemed fine around her.

She made her way back to the dorm and climbed the stairs to her dorm; pressing her scroll against the lock she walked in and saw Evie laying on her bed. Thing between them were a lot better now but being alone with her was still a little embarrassing, it didn't help that the feelings towards Evie were still there. Opal didn't feel like she was in love with her partner but she definitely knew it was more than a crush. The way her heart still beat whenever Evie entered the room or spoke to her, the way her eyes would linger a little too long on whatever she did and the nerves she could only feel when Evie was around told her that what she felt was something more but Evie had made it clear that her feelings wouldn't be reciprocated. She still remembered that conversation, how Evie had stuttered none stop as she tried to turn Opal down gently, how she herself had started to cry and apologized repeatedly for making things awkward, though that part was a secret that not even Raalm knew. Opal shook her head and made her way over to her chest of drawers, pulled out her bag and started to pack.

"Hey Opal, g-guessing Glynda gave you p-permission then," Evie started to make conversation.

"Y-Yeah," Opal stuttered back. "Maybe I will see you there," she smiled.

"You will, I g-gave mom a call earlier and a-asked if we would be going there, she said we w-would be close and that we could s-swing by," she said, smiling back.

"Sounds good," Opal said back now focused more on the girl than on what she was doing.

"Umm... O-Opal, y-your trying to p-pack the d-drawer into your bag," Evie stuttered shyly, most likely knowing why Opal was doing that.

"Crap," was all Opal replied, giving Evie an apologetic look before turning her eyes away and bringing her focus back onto her task.

"I-I'm going to t-take a s-shower, leave you to p-pack in p-peace," Evie said, pulling her nightclothes from one of her drawers and walking into the bathroom.

 _Yeah, because the idea of you being naked less than a meter away is really going to help_ , Opal thought to herself, hearing the taps turn on and turning a little red, banging her head against the drawers as Garrick entered the room.

"What's up with you?" he asked as he noticed her sitting there with here head against the drawers.

"Nothing, just thinking," she sighed, returning to her packing.

"Okay then, guess I has nothing to do with a certain showering girl just on the other side of that wall," Garrick teased her, making her give him an evil look while she went even more red than she already was. "Just a joke," he laughed, putting his hands it the air as if Opal had her bow aimed at him.

With Garrick proving an ample distraction, it only took Opal five minutes to pack all her clothes into her medium sized backpack. With everything packed she shoved her backpack into the corner of the room and climbed up onto her elevated bed, that only left a little room between her and the ceiling, and settled down to relax, desperate to forget the conversation that had transpired only minutes ago.

"So you and Raalm are going to be partying together this summer," Garrick said as his head popped over the side of her bed, "and Evie will probably be joining you, but what about poor old me?" He said with a fake pout.

"Well Raalm would have invited you but he was probably scared you would destroy the entire village," she replied turning to face him.

"Wow, I'm not that bad, am I?" he laughed back.

"Do I need to remind you about the training room wall?" she smiled back.

"Hey that was all of us,"he replied, hopping down from the side of her bed and banging on the door to the bathroom and telling Evie to hurry up. "Where is our missing leader anyway? Don't tell me he spent the entire day in the library again."

"Yup, he had almost finished his book by the time I left so he should be back soon," Opal said, turning to lay on her back and stare at the ceiling. Raalm had been spending more time than usual in the library for the past week and while it was not unusual to see him studying, something did feel a little off about it. "Maybe we should talk to him when he gets back, see if he's feeling alright," Opal suggested.

"No point, you know as well as I do that Raalm doesn't really talk about stuff that's bothering him," Garrick replied. "Besides, its probably just some school stuff, remember the time he spent sulking because got a B on his test, took a whole week of beating the shit out of him in training to get him to talk."

Garrick wasn't wrong, Raalm screwing up his schoolwork often tended to put him in a weird mood. Opal understood wanting to get good grades but occasionally it seemed like it meant more than that to Raalm. Getting any question wrong would cause him to study late into the night, and he had made himself sick more than once because he had refused to sleep. Luckily though; Raalm was at least sleeping and eating just fine at the moment so Opal didn't feel like it was anything too serious. She made a mental note to talk to his mother about that when she met her.

"I'll talk to him, tomorrow on the way to his village, he's always in a better mood after riding Cassie," Opal said to Garrick as Evie opened the door to the bathroom.

"Okay, if you find out anything then let me know," Garrick replied as he rushed to the toilet.

"Find anything out about w-what?" Evie asked, drying her hair.

"About why Raalms been more anti-social than normal lately," Opal replied. "I don't suppose you know anything do you?"

"N-No, but I know is not schoolwork this time, he got t-top marks on his last tests," she said sitting down on her bed. "He could b-be nervous about g-going home."

"Maybe, I guess we'll see," Opal replied, looking at the clock. It had been just over an hour since she had left Raalm back in the library so he should be back soon. Opal decided that she should get some sleep since they had a long day of riding ahead of them so she turned around and said goodnight to Evie before closing her eyes and falling into dreams of a large, empty forest.

 **The Next Day**

Opal awoke to Raalm shaking her shoulder. Light barely breaking through the curtains told her that it was still early morning and a quick look at the clock told her that it was only 6am.

"Get up and shower, we're leaving soon," Raalm said, using a towel to dry his hair.

"Ugh why are you leaving so early?" Opal asked, sliding out of her bed and slipping down onto the floor.

"I want to get a head start and make sure we keep daylight for our travel," he replied, pulling his jacket on. "The outskirts can get a little rough and we'll have to stop a few times but at night it gets worse so it would be best to get there before it gets dark."

"Okay then, I wont take too long to get ready," Opal said, grabbing a towel and heading for the bathroom. "And wake Garrick and Evie up, they'll kill us if we don't say goodbye."

Locking the door, Opal turned the shower on and began to strip down, looking at herself in the mirror. Opal was happy with how she looked as constant training and healthy eating had kept her in good shape, but there were still things she was unhappy about, small scars littered her stomach and arms from the training she had received as a child and but the thing she hated most was a scar that lay across her right breast, a remnant of the time she had been sparing with her brother and he had ripped his sword across it, even though he knew her aura was down. It was deep enough to require stitches and had taken weeks to heal, even with her aura speeding up the process. Shaking her head to empty it of those memories, she stepped into the shower and allowed the hot water to wash over her.

As promised, she only took about ten minutes to shower and five to dry off, brush her teeth and get dressed. As she exited the bathroom, Evie was already up and getting her clothes ready while Garrick had refused to leave his bed and instead had wrapped himself tighter in the covers. Raalm was sitting at his desk studying another book while he waited for Opal.

"Come on Garrick, hibernation isn't for another 5 months," Opal joked pulling on his covers in an attempt to get him up.

"Screw that, I'm doing it early," he said, wrapping himself up tighter until Raalm came over and ripped the cover away, pulling Garrick onto the floor. "Dude, not cool," Garrick said as he stretched out and reached up for his pillow, throwing it at Raalm who dodged it with ease.

"Cafeteria should be open already," he said, turning away from Garrick who was now standing up and making his bed. "Me and Opal will be waiting for you both there but were leaving at seven so hurry up if you want to say goodbye."

"Alright alright," Garrick replied, grabbing his jeans from the chair on his desk and pulling them on as Raalm opened the door to leave.

As they walked to the cafeteria, Opal decided to test the water with Raalm so that she knew how to do her later questioning later.

"So what time did you get back last night?" She asked, starting off slow.

"About half past ten I think, not too sure," he replied. "I figured you and Evie would already be asleep so I tried to be as quiet as possible when I came in."

"Thanks, you've been spending a lot of time at the library lately," she pushed a little further.

"Well that's where all the books are," he replied, his voice would have seemed normal to anyone else but Opal recognised a slight shift that meant he knew what she was getting at and didn't want to talk about it.

Giving up for the time being, Opal let the topic go and walked the rest of the way in silence. The cafeteria was almost always open around six and today was no different. As they walked in they saw a couple of other students who had also risen early for the holidays. The smell of freshly cooked bacon filled the room and Opal almost began to drool, realising how hungry she was since she had skipped dinner yesterday to study with Raalm. Both her and Raalm grabbed a plate of omelettes and sat down at their usual place one of the middle tables.

"So, are you looking forward to seeing your family again?" Opal started on the conversation. "It's been almost a year since you last saw them."

"Yeah I guess," he replied, swallowing his mouthful of egg. "Dad will probably have a bunch of jobs for me to do around the village and mom will want to know everything that has happened over the last year, but it should be fun."

"Well I'll help with those jobs wherever I can," Opal said with a smile.

"Thanks, it will mainly just be cleaning up the village and occasionally helping on the farm," he said looking around as Garrick and Evie walked into the cafeteria, Evie sitting down next to them as Garrick went to get their food.

"Hey, I d-didn't hear you get b-back last night," Evie stuttered to Raalm as she sat down. "Did Opal t-tell you I would be visiting the

v-village?"

"Nope, she was busy try to get into my head," Raalm said back, giving Opal a little smile.

"What's everyone talking about?" Garrick asked, sitting down with his bacon sandwich and passing a bowl of cereal over to Evie.

"How Evie is coming to visit over the summer," replied Raalm, sliding something over to Garrick. "Sorry for earlier."

"Don't sweat it, would rather see my family off then sleep anyway," he smiled back.

"You know your welcome as well right?" Raalm said.

"I know," Garrick laughed back. "I will see if I can make it up for a couple of days but I'm probably going to be busy helping my mom, she's had to run the shop pretty much on her own this past year."

Raalm understood, his own family had been working hard all year just to be able to afford Raalm's tuition, something he didn't believe he would ever be able to thank them enough for.

The rest of the meal passed by with them all making small talk, the occasional joke and one another's expense that would cause everyone to laugh until finally Raalm looked at his watch and saw it was time for them to be leaving. All four of them stood up and made their way out of the cafeteria and to the stables, where Raalm retrieved Cassie and strapped his bag to her side.

"You two look after yourselves out there," Garrick said, hugging Opal goodbye and offering a hand to Raalm before pulling him into a one armed hug. "And give us a call when you get there."

"We will, you just try not to get yourself arrested," she said to Garrick before turning to Evie and giving her a hug. "You be careful out there."

"I-I will, p-plus we will have p-professional huntsmen with us so we s-should be fine," she stuttered back, returning the hug.

"I hope to see you both soon," Raalm said, giving Evie a quick hug before hopping up onto Cassie, Opal jumping up and sat behind him.

With a final goodbye to their friends, Raalm dug his heels gently in Cassie's sides, causing her to trot forward onto the dirt path the led into Vale before turning her trot into a canter.


	9. Lenter

**Chapter 9 – Lenter**

 **Raalm Neeth**

Raalm pushed Cassie back into a steady canter, having spent the last ten minutes trotting along after they had been forced to speed up to get away from a pack of Beowolves. Opal clung to his side with one hand while her other held her bow just in case they happened upon any more Grimm, but for the time being everything seemed quiet once again. They had left they city six hours ago and encountered more trouble than Raalm remembered encountering when he rode into Vale at the start of the year. He had heard rumors that things outside the kingdom were getting worse but he had chosen not to believe them; though seeing things now, he couldn't help but agree as it felt like they had seen packs of Grimm every thirty minutes so far but most of them were easily avoided by slowing down and the few packs that had caught a glimpse of them were easily outran. Thankfully they were over half way to the village and they had not needed to fight yet, Opal did have to shoot a couple that came to close but apart from that, all had gone well.

"There's a little clearing up ahead, we should stop and take a minute to give Cassie some water and stretch out," Raalm said to Opal.

"Sure, but we will need to be careful, the open area will leave us exposed and a Grimm attack might spook her," she replied.

It only took them five minutes to reach the clearing and as soon as they arrived, Opal jumped down and ran of into the trees, doing a quick check of the surrounding area. Two minutes later he heard Opal's telltale bird call, signalling that they were safe. Jumping down from the Cassie himself, he walked to her side and reached into the bag attached to her saddle and pulling out a bowl and a bottle of water, setting it in front of her and filling it. He looked around at their clearing, most of it being trodden down dirt from from frequent travellers that used this path but behind him stood the remains of a solitary tower, not a single floor seemed to have survived the years since it was built. Crumbled stone littered the ground where the tower walls once stood and the wall that still remained seemed to be close to joining the rubble. Raalm took a seat on the a large piece of stone and sighed, he thought about how once upon a time people had lived here and about how the crumbled remains of the tower showed the disparity between life inside the kingdom and outside.

People in the kingdom were still in danger since natural barriers only made it harder for Grimm to invade its streets, not impossible but people outside the kingdom had no such protection. Raalm remembered the days in his village, the frequent attacks on his home and the losses he had suffered because of them and the structure he now sat on only added to his sorrow as for the past year, he had been inside that city. He had been as safe as possible from the cruel realities of the world while the people he knew and loved had risked their lives to keep him there.

"Raalm, are you okay?" Opal asked, snapping him out of his guilty thoughts.

"Yeah, just thinking is all," he answered back with a half-hearted smile.

"Are you sure? You look a little annoyed," she pressed.

"I'm fine, just feels a little weird being back out here is all," he replied.

"Yeah, the silence feels a little harrowing," Opal admits, sitting down next to him.

"You get used to the silence," he said back with a small laugh. "Its the constant feeling of being watched that will drive you crazy before anything else."

Raalm unwound his chain and began stretching his arm out as he looked around, watching the trees for any sign of movement. The outskirts of Vale was one big forest and though it was not as dense as the Emerald Forest, it kept the same feeling of unease. The tree were spaced out enough to allow for easy movement between them but close enough to block out the light and cast shadows over the entire forest, and it was these shadows that Raalm watched so diligently as something could jump from them at any moment.

The two of them sat the in silence for a few minutes until Opal finally noticed it.

"Raalm," Opal said standing up and pulling out her daggers. "The birds."

"I know," he replied while walking over to Cassie and pulling on her reins, leading her closer to the tower and giving her to Opal. He listened once again and was met by complete silence, not a single bird was singing.

Winding is chain back around his arm he walked back to the bowl and picked it up running back to the horse and shoving it into the bag.

"Get on, we're leaving" he whispered to Opal as he lifted himself onto Cassie's back.

Not a second after he was fully seated, three Beowolves came jumping out of the shadows and into the clearing, staring straight at them. Opal pulled out her bow and readied a blue feathered arrow along it.

"GO," she shouted.

Raalm dug his heels hard into Cassie sides, pushing her into a full gallop as the Beowolves charged and Opal let the arrow fly. The ground turned to ice the second it made contact, causing the beasts to slip and fall, one of them whimpering in pain as it landed on a blade of grass that had been covered in a sudden icicle. Cassie sped off down the path at full speed, Opal having provided a decent head start but more Grimm soon jumped out of the trees and gave chase. Raalm urged Cassie to go faster, determined not to fight unless it was absolutely necessary. Outside of Vale, a fight could go from three Beowolves to ten and a matter of seconds and that wasn't something Raalm wanted to deal with right now as more would be likely to show up.

"I've got an idea," Opal shouted at Raalm as she turned around on the horse and freed the other strings of her bow. "

Raalm looked back for a second to see what Opal was doing and saw her put two white feathered arrows and a red feather one onto the strings and pull them back. She he watched as she released them, the red just slighting flying free before the to white and slamming into the ground with an explosion that kicked up the ground and the white landing moments after, trapping the explosion and debris in a large ball of spiked ice. The sound of the Grimm yelping could be heard as Raalm turning around and continued the push Cassie forward.

"I think that bought us some time, and it might have killed some of them," Opal shouted as she turned herself back around.

"Okay, we need to keep going before they catch back up," he shouted back, ripping off his t-shirt with one hand and passing it back to Opal, not letting Cassie slow down even for a second. "Fire it off into the trees, the scent might distract some of them."

Opal took the shirt and pulled a normal arrow from her quiver, wrapping the sweaty fabric around it and firing it off into the trees. "Do you really think that will work," she shouted back.

"Maybe, if even one picks up on the scent then at least that's one less chasing us," he replied.

They rode on at full speed for another minute until Opal confirmed that nothing was following them and Raalm pulled back on the reins, slowing Cassie back down to a canter and then to a trot. He knew that they couldn't afford another run like that as Cassie was getting tired and any more full speed gallops like that would make her be unable to do anything more than a slow walk.

"Cassie can't keep running like this," Raalm said to Opal. "We've been trying to avoid it but if we get spotted again then we will have to fight."

"We'll be fine," Opal replied, putting her arm on Raalm's shoulder.

They rode on for another hour before stopping at a small lake to allow Cassie to drink, both of them staying on her back this time. Raalm looked down at his watch and saw that it was getting close to 3pm. All that galloping had at least kept them on schedule.

"How far left to go?" Opal asked as she leaned down to the bag attached to Cassie's saddle, pulled out a t-shirt and passed it to Raalm.

"Not too far now, its just over that hill," he replied, talking off his jacket momentarily to slip the t-shirt over his head while pointing at a large hill on the opposite side of the lake. "We need to follow the path around the lake but we should get to the village by four," he said showing her his watch.

They set off again once Cassie had finished drinking. It took thirty minutes to ride to the other side of the lake and another five to climb the hill but finally the village was in sight. It was still another thirty minutes away but they could see it from the top of the hill. A large circular stone wall with wooden supports surrounded no more than fifteen stone buildings with thatch roofs. In the very centre of the village stood the town hall, the biggest building in the village after the store houses, the tower that protruded from the top always had someone manning it, looking over all the whole village. Towards the back where the farms, big patched of land that were use to grow all sorts of foods that would mostly be sold off on trips to Vale. Raalm smiled when he saw it. His home was still standing. He tightened his hands on the reins and urged Cassie forward into a steady canter, aiming straight for his village. Thankfully they didn't receive any trouble as they made their way along the beaten down path and soon the village gates were in sight.

"Stop," said a man Raalm didn't recognise, standing on top of the wall aiming a rifle right at them. "What's your business here?"

"I live here," Raalm answered back, both him and Opal putting their hand above their heads.

"Then how come I haven't seen you around before," the man replied, lifting his rifle and readying his trigger finger.

"My name is Raalm," he answered, with his hands still above his head. "I'm Eris and Malik's son, I've been away at Beacon for the last year."

The man lowers his rifle slightly and pulls a walkie talky from his belt, calling to confirm his identity. A couple of second later he punched a code into a control panel and the gate began to open.

"Welcome back kid," the man said to Raalm. "Sorry about pointing the rifle at ya, just being cautious ya'know."

"Its fine, I've been in that position," Raalm smiled back, putting his arms down and riding through the now open gates. "I don't recognise you, are you new here?"

"Yeah, came here from the Nameless Lands near four months ago now, I'm still a little jumpy." he said.

"How are things out there?" Raalm asked.

"Whatever the Grimm don't destroy, the bandits take so lets just say I'm thanking my lucky stars there's a cliff between us now," he replied with a nod of his head. "You have a good day kid."

As they got down from the horse and began stretching their legs,a blur of black and blue came speeding towards Raalm, slamming into his chest and knocking him over. He looked down and saw a black haired girl laying on his chest with her arms around his shoulders. Smiling, her patted her on the head and gave her a smile.

"I missed you too sis, but please can I stand up?" He said while trying to loosen her grip on his neck.

She immediately jumped off of him and gave him a wide smile as he got to his feet, though she immediately pulled him back into a hug once he was standing.

"Opal, this is my little sister Bethany," he said as he pulled himself free and spun his sister around. "Bethany, this is Opal, a good friend of mine from school."

"Nice to meet you," they both said to each other as Bethany pulled Opal into a hug.

"Beth, do you mind taking Cassie to the stables?" Raalm said to the girl. "She's quite tired and I should go and find mom."

"Sure, mom is over in the carrot fields," Beth replied, taking Cassie's reins and leading her off into the village.

Raalm began walk into the village, Opal trailing slightly behind him, pointing out places as they walked. The carrot field was near the back of the village but as the village was small, it only took them a few minutes to reach it. As they arrived, Raalm took a deep breath and told Opal to cover her ears before walking up to a small woman with black hair and and tapping her on the shoulder. She turned around a let out a high pitched scream, pulling him into a hug that would have crushed his bones if his aura wasn't up. He quickly returned the hug and stayed there for what felt like an eternity. Eventually they pulled away from each other, tears streaming down the woman's face as she used a towel to wipe them away as she looked at her son.

"Your early," was the first thing she said, pulling him back into a gentler hug. "I was going to finish up and then wait by the gate to meet you. How was the journey?"

"Sorry, we had to speed up quite often to get away from Grimm so we got here a little ahead of schedule," he replied, looking at Opal.

Noticing that they weren't alone, this mom pushed Raalm aside and pulled Opal into a tight hug. "You must be Opal," she said, squeezing the girl tightly. "You can call me Eris, thank you for looking after my son," she said pulling away and looking her up and down.

"I-I don't really," Opal replied, moving her hands behind her back. "He's a great leader and an amazing fighter." she smiled back.

"That he is," she said said beaming with pride and pausing a minute to look at Raalm before jumping as if she had forgotten something. "You two must be starving having ridden all that way, come to the house and I'll fix you something up," she said, grabbing Opal by the arm and pulling her along.

Raalm followed his mother as she guided Opal towards their house and pulled her inside, sitting her down at the table and moving towards the kitchen. The house itself was not too big, it had one room that was used as a dining area with a kitchen attached and three small bedrooms. All the walls in the house were painted white but over years they had turned into more of a light grey color; though his mother did her best to keep them as clean as possible, there was only so much you could do. On one of the walls was a fireplace that was often used as nights tended to get cold even in the summer. Sitting down opposite Opal he was surprised to see her smiling.

"You enjoying yourself?" he said with a smile as she turned around.

"Its amazing to see everyone here is so happy," she replied with a smile. "With all the danger of Grimm, I thought that maybe the mood was going to be different a little rough."

"Well... we make the most of what peace we have," Raalm said, the smell of his mothers cooking making its way through the house. "Don't get me wrong, some days can get pretty rough but normally everyone is in pretty high spirits."

"Then how did you turn out so grumpy?" she said, sticking her tongue out at him.

"I don't know, just happened I guess," he replied with a smile after a minute of silence. "Anyway, you should let Garrick and Evie know we arrived."

With a nod, she pulled out her scroll and text them both. As she was doing so, Raalm's mom brought out a pot of vegetable soup and a loaf of bread, setting it on the table and walking back to the kitchen, returning seconds later with two bowls.

"Dig in both of you, eat as much as you like," she said, sitting down beside Opal.

Both of them took those words to heart and filled their bowls, they hadn't been able to eat on the journey due to the amount of Grimm they had encountered. No one spoke as they ate, to busy stuffing there faces but they finally began to slow down on their third bowl. Raalm looked at Opal's scroll as a message from Evie came in asking if Opal needed her to bring more dust, he picked it up and read it out for Opal who gave a nod while reaching for more bread.

"Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you but one of our other friends should be stopping by, I'm not sure when though," he told his mom who nodded back.

"What about your other teammate?" She asked curiously. "He's welcome as well."

"He said he will try to make it out but he's going to be busy," Raalm replied.

"Okay well let me know in advance so we can borrow an extra bed from the Flannerys," she said, getting up and picking up the now empty pot and taking it into the kitchen. "Also your fathers up on the south wall, he probably know your back already but you should go and say hello to him."

Fishing out the last of his soup, he nodded his head and got to his feet. He started towards the door and looked back to saw Opal still sitting at the table.

"Are you coming?" he asked.

"You go on ahead, I'm going to help your mom clean up first," she replied with a smile. "I insist," she added as his mom attempted to decline the offer.

"Okay well when your done, come and find me if you want," he said, walking out of the house and heading towards the south wall.

People shouted welcomes as he walked through the village, some even coming up and shaking his hand. Being back in the village felt weird, it was comfortable but it no longer felt completely like home, it was like his heart was split between two places. Ignoring this feeling, he approached the building attached to the wall and banged on the door. It didn't take long until someone unlocked it and allowed him inside. The man who opened the door gave a quick welcome and pointed to the stairs. Raalm gave a quick nod and began to climb them until finally he was standing on the village wall over looking the forest to his left and village to his right. With one glance around he saw a large, intimidating looking man with a stern face keeping watch over the forest and walked up to stand next to him.

"Everything quiet out there," he asked his father.

"Not as quiet as I would like it to be but its good enough," he said with a sigh, turning to look at his son and smiling. The smile softened his features and made look five years younger.

He let out a laugh and pulled his son into a one armed hug.

"You look well son, but I hope that the city hasn't softened you up too much," he laughed. "There's a lot to be done around the village."

"Don't worry about that old man," Raalm replied with a smile, relief washing over him now that he had seen all of his family were safe.

After a minute, his father released him from the hug and turned back to look over the forest. Raalm decide he would take up the watch alongside he father and the two of them stood there into the night, talking of the adventures they had each had over the last year.


	10. Vale

**A/N**

 **Just a few words before the chapter.**

 **So there will not be an upload next week as I have fallen a little behind in my writing and there has been a lot of stuff happening in my personal life that I need to sort out, so I apologise for that but I should return to uploading in 2 weeks (October 24th). Also, a massive shout out to Blacsparrow, they've been a massive help with this as always so please check them out if you have time, I would highly recommend 'In My Sights'.**

 **Anyways please enjoy that chapter, Evie is difficult for me to write so any feedback you give is welcome :)**

* * *

 **Chapter 10 – Vale**

 **Evie Starr**

Evie watched as Raalm and Opal rode off out of sight before turning to follow Garrick back to the cafeteria. As she walked, she thought about the last year she had spent with her friends, how much they had shared and how much they helped each other. Opal had been giving Evie extra combat training for most of the year while Raalm had occasionally helped her with homework and studying for tests, though those were the only real times she had spent with him. They got along decently enough but they had never really taken the time to get to know each other. _I should really try to change that next year_ , she thought to herself. Raalm interested her, while most people said he seemed cold, anyone who spent enough time around him could see that he cared more than anyone else, he just didn't show it in the same way. Garrick on the other hand was her emotional support, he treated her as a little sister despite being two months younger than her and was always there when she needed him, always able to make her feel better. She remembered the day when she sat down with Opal and talked to her about the kiss and how after that was finished, Garrick spent the whole night with her as she cried, hating how much hurt she had caused her friend without realising it, and reassuring her that everything would be fine and that Opal didn't hate her.

As she thought on the past year, a tear fell down her cheek, the realisation that she wouldn't be seeing the people she loved for the next few months beginning to set in.

"So you want to gra..." Garrick started, turning around to see that Evie had stopped walking and tears were now flowing gently. "Heyyy, what's the matter?" he asked pulling her into a hug.

"Its s-s-stupid, I'm j-just going t-to miss everyone," she stuttered back through gentle sobs.

Garrick laughed as he pulled her in a little tighter. "You idiot, that's not stupid, we've been practically like family this past year," he said still laughing. "I'm going to miss everyone too, but right now I am missing food more." he said, picking her up and carrying her to cafeteria while her sobs slowly turned to laughter and she slowly struggled to get free.

"Garrick, p-put me d-down," she stuttered as students smiled at them.

"Nope, if this is the last few hours I get to see our team princess, then I will carry her wherever she needs to go," he said, continuing to walk. "Besides, I'm still hungry and you, little sister, are slowing me down."

"Your always hungry," she said whispered, though she knew he still probably heard her. "I'll walk, I promise."

"And no more silly crying?" He asked with a smile.

She nodded her head and he put her down. She bent to straighten out her jeans as she walked, still a little sad that she would not see him for a while but also with a big smile on her face that only Garrick could give her.

As they entered the cafeteria, they saw that it was now far busier than when they left as students were now waking up, ready to leave school for a couple of months and see their families. Evie walked up to an empty spot at a table and sat down as Garrick went to get more food. A couple of minutes after she sat down, she was joined by Arnold and Tina of Team ARGT.

"Hey Evie, where's the rest of your team?" Arnold asked with a smile.

"G-Garrick is getting more f-food and Raalm and Opal have already l-left." Evie smiled back. Team ARGT were nice enough people but the two teams rarely had much contact with each other, both preferring to do their own things.

"Oh, Opal went with him?" Tina asked, pretending not to be too interested. Tina had asked Opal out months ago and had been turned down but Tina still seemed to be interested. Evie couldn't help but feel a little bad as she knew that she was part of the reason Opal had turned her down in the first place.

"Hey Arnold," Garrick interrupted, sitting down at the table with another plate of bacon and his usual jar of honey, passing an apple to Evie. "Tina, not trying to woo our healer this time are you?" He said with a wink in her direction to which she rolled her eyes.

"Nope just talking and passing time until the airships get here," Arnold smiled back.

"Evie. Talking. You must still be recovering from the hit we gave you yesterday," Garrick said while shoving a piece of bacon into his mouth.

"I can t-talk just f-fine," she said, taking the chance to swipe Garrick's small jar of honey while he was distracted with his bacon.

"Hey, that is a punishable offence little sister, now give it back and I might go easy on you," he said with a mock serious tone.

She stuck her tongue out and quickly spun the top off, put her finger into the yellow liquid and stuck the finger in her mouth.

"Alright that does it, no free food from my mom's bakery for you," he said, resigning and letting her have the honey, pulling the one Raalm had given him earlier out of his pocket.

She let out a small laugh and picked up knife from the table, chopping the apple into pieces and dipping them into the sweet yellow liquid.

"S-So what are y-you two doing over th-the holidays," Evie asked Arnold and Tina both of whom had been quietly laughing at the scene in front of them.

"Me and Rebecca will be going home, spend some time with our dad in the city and relax," Tina replied.

"Same here really, except I'm going be staying with my brother," Arnold said.

"Well both of you are welcome at the bakery whenever you like, twenty percent friend discount," Garrick said smiling at them both.

"Awesome, thanks," Arnold said with a smile. "Hopefully I will see you both around town."

"You might see me but not little miss hero," Garrick said, nudging Evie. "She's going off into the wild to save everyone."

"I would expect no less," Tina replied, looking over at the door to see her sister signalling to her. "I guess the airships are here, see you next year," she said as she stood up and walked over to Rebecca.

"We should all probably get going too," Arnold said as he stood up.

Nodding in agreement, Evie and Garrick stood up and made their way back to the dorms to grab their things before heading to the airships. As they waited at the waterfall for an airship to arrive they took one last look at beacon, it was the last time they were going to see it for a while.

 **Later that day**

Evie stepped out the airship and looked around, searching for the face of the woman she loved the most, and found her after a couple of seconds. There in the crowd was her mother, still wearing her work scrubs and a pale blue jacket, her light blonde hair shining in the sun. As Evie ran towards her, she held her arms outstretched and Evie ran straight into them. She had been able to she her mother quite often throughout the year, more than she thought she would as she occasionally came to Vale on the weekends to replenish her dust supplies, and often had time to stop by the hospital that her mother worked at; but even though she had seen her mother, she still missed her terribly.

"Good to have you back angel," her mother said as she hugged Evie.

"It's good to be b-back mom," she replied, tightening the hug.

Evie remained in her mother arms for a minute before pulling away and taking a deep breath.

"Are you okay mum?" Evie asked, the look on her mothers face was that of someone about to collapse.

"I'm just tired is all angel, I pulled a lot of extra shifts so that I could get the week off before we leave for the villages," she said while stifling a yawn.

"Okay well lets g-get you home then so you can g-get some rest," Evie said, puling her mother into a walk.

"I could carry you if you want Miss Starr?" A voice said from behind her.

In her happiness, Evie had forgotten that Garrick was still with her. Garrick had met her mother almost as often as she had seen her over the past year as he always came to Vale with her.

"No thank you Garrick, I can walk just fine," she replied with a soft smile. "Is your mother not waiting here for you?"

"She wanted to but she couldn't leave the shop unattended and Saturdays are the busiest of the week," he replied. "If you don't need any help then I should probably get over there and tell her I'm home."

Evie and her mother gave Garrick a quick hug and he turned and walked off, after forcing Evie to promise she would call and let him know she was fine whenever she got the chance.

As they drove home, Evie told her mother as much as she could about the year she had had, something she hadn't really been able to do in the few minutes they were able to see each other during her trips to Vale. However, the journey to their house didn't take too long and as soon as she got home, she took her mother to her bed and ordered her to get some rest.

While her mother slept, Evie past the time by fiddling with her gloves. She was always trying to improve them by making them hold more dust and be able to expel it easier but after years of tweaking, they were practically perfected. Finally, after two hours of fiddling, she couldn't find anything to do with them so she resigned herself to watching the television, hoping to find something on that could distract her except she found nothing but news about White Fang protests and attacks.

The White Fang were a group of Faunus that had formed after a large war between the Faunus and the Humans who's purpose had been to serve as ambassadors to the Humans. They were responsible for making sure the Faunus voice was heard, whether that was by talking with the Humans or by peaceful protests. However, in the past 3 years, they had begun to attack people, rob incoming dust and even went so far as burning down shops and no one knew why. Evie agreed that Faunus were still very mistreated but she still didn't think their actions were justified.

Evie had enough of the depressing news so she turned off the television, grabbed the car keys and went upstairs to check on her mother, finding her still soundly asleep, before leaving the house. Feeling slightly hungry, she started up the car and decided to go to the bakery and see Garrick and his mother. Evie had met Garrick's mother a few times when she and the others had gone in for something to eat but she was always too busy to talk. It only took Evie twenty minutes to reach her destination, parking the car in a nearby car park, she walked the rest of the way to the _Just Right_ bakery.

The shop itself only held five small tables and each of them was occupied and a counter stood opposite the door, a girl with shining bronze hair and golden eyes, both of which were emphasised by her pale skin, smiled at her as she entered. Evie didn't care much about her own looks but this girl definitely made her a little jealous.

"Hey Evie," the girl said as Evie walked through the door. "Garrick is in the back, want me to let you through?"

"N-No thanks Jess, do you m-mind letting him kn-know I'm here though," Evie replied with a smile.

"Of course, one minute," Jess said, disappearing into the back room.

As Evie waited she pulled a cookie off the shelf and started eating it, feeling a little uncomfortable as one couples gave her a strange look. The first time they had come in, Garrick's mother had told her to help herself to whatever she wanted whenever she wanted as a thanks for keeping her son under control; though she didn't feel like she was doing a good job. Garrick would still often find himself in some kind of trouble, thankfully though it was never anything serious and more than always just because of a silly prank he had pulled on someone.

"Evie? How are you dear?" A voice called from the window to the kitchen, making Evie jump.

"O-Oh I'm f-fine thank you M-Mrs Cane," she replied as Garrick's mother came out of the door with a fresh tray of cookies. "How are you?"

"Here you go, have a fresh one," she said handing her one of the freshly baked cookies. "And I am very good thank you, I have my son back safe and sound for now so, its been a good day."

"You still d-don't like Garrick going to B-Beacon?" Evie asked, knowing that while she had given him permission, she had fought with him every year leading up to it.

"Of course not, I lost his father to that line of work and everyone knows that huntsmen and huntresses rarely make it to an old age," she sighed as she looked at a picture of her husband on the counter. "But if he's got friends like you then, I guess my mind can be put to rest a little," she added with a smile.

Evie looked at the picture of Garrick's father. They looked so much alike that if a picture of Garrick stood beside it then the only way she could tell the difference would be through the wrinkles, the likeness was only amplified by the great mace that rested on the man's back. As she inspected the picture, Garrick came walking out from the store room carrying a case of drinks.

"Wow, did you miss me that much already?" He joked as he put the case on the floor. "And I hope you paid for those."

"Hey, work while you talk," Mrs Cane said. "And she is free to eat whatever she wants," she added as she made her way back to the kitchen.

Evie stuck her tongue out at Garrick and took another bite of the cookie.

"I hope you know that she treats you better than her own son," he replied.

"I kn-know," Evie replied with a smile. "So how d-did Jess react to s-seeing you?"

"She squealed so loud that mom dropped a tray of cupcakes and almost fired her," he laughed back.

"It wasn't funny," Jess said as she returned to the counter. "I didn't even know I was capable of making a noise like that."

"Aww, I thought it was cute," he stood up and kissed her as she blushed.

"Well don't expect to hear it again," she smiled and walked off to sort out the cookies.

"You m-must be excited to b-be able to see her everyday n-next year," Evie teased.

"It will certainly make things easier, the past year has pretty hard on us," he replied.

"I know," Evie said, remembering the times she would hear Garrick shouting at his scroll as she approached the dorm room.

"Anyway, that's all behind us now," he said standing up, having finished refilling the fridge. "Hows your mom doing?"

"She's f-fine, she's sleeping at the m-moment," Evie answered. "I actually came to g-get her some cupcakes but looks like your all out of her f-favorite ones."

"Oh, why don't you ask my mom to make some, I'm sure she will be happy to," Garrick said, calling out to his mom as Evie tried to stop him.

"What was that?" She asked as she walked out of the kitchen once more.

"N-N-Nothing M-Mrs C-C-Cane," Evie stammered hard, but her voice barely reached a whisper.

"Evie came by for some cupcakes for her mom but we're all out of the ones she wanted, would you be able to make her some?" Garrick asked his mom without hesitation.

"Sure thing dear, which ones were you after?" she asked nicely, noticing how uncomfortable Evie had suddenly become.

"B-B-Butterscotch p-please," Evie whispered, her eyes refusing to meet the woman's and instead fixing themselves to the floor.

"Easy enough, I was meaning to refill them anyway," she said with a smile, walking back into the kitchen.

Evie knew this was a lie as they were a weekend morning special and were first come first serve. Now feeling extremely uncomfortable, Evie began to panic a little. Noticing this, Garrick stood up and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Jess, I'll be back in a minute," he said as he steered Evie out of the bakery and into a small alley next to it. "I'm sorry, I forgot," he said, his voice a little angry. At himself no doubt.

"Its. Fine." she replied through deep breaths while leaning against the wall. She saw Garrick began to put his arm out to touch her shoulder only for him to snatch it back with a confused look on his face.

It took Evie a minute but her breathing finally slowed. Now calm, she gave Garrick a smile to let him know she was fine to which he breathed a sigh of relief. They entered the bakery, Garrick now being a little too quite for Evie's liking, and Evie sat herself down on one of the newly unoccupied tables, while Garrick went into the back room to continue with the restocking after checking that she really was okay. An hour passed and Garrick's mother came out of the kitchen carrying a tray of freshly made butterscotch cupcakes.

"How many did you want dear?" She asked.

"J-Just four p-please," Evie replied, still not looking at her. "S-Sorry you had to make m-more of them."

"I didn't have to, I chose to," she replied giving Evie a smile and putting the cupcakes into a small box and handing it to her. "Say hello to your mom for me," she added before walking back into the kitchen.

Evie paid for the cupcakes as she felt it was only right since they were really only made because she had wanted them, and with a final goodbye to Garrick, left the shop and walked back to the car.

As she walked into her house, she saw her mother sitting on the couch watching an old film.

"Where did you get off to?" She asked, smiling as Evie walked in. "Were you okay?"

"Just went to g-get us something to eat," Evie replied pulling the box of cupcake from behind her back and sitting next to her mother. "Everything was fine," she lied.

"Good, what did you get?" she asked, reaching for the box.

Evie handed it to her and saw her mother face light up as she opened it up and pulled one of the cupcakes from the box. With a smile she pulled another one out and handed the box back to Evie before settling back into watching the film. Evie pulled one out and snuggled up closer to her mother.

"I really missed you," she said, resting her head on her mothers shoulder.

"I missed you too angel," she replied, giving Evie a kiss on the forehead.

Evie couldn't help but smile as they laid there and watched the film in silence. She was finally home.


	11. The Stained Road

**AUTHOR NOTE**

 **So I wrote this story a while ago but abandoned it due to the show actually doing many (and when I say many I mean down to Hazels dust injection fighting style and his semblance) of the idea's I had planned and I did not want to come across as copying the idea's. However I decided to upload the rest of the chapters I had written out, with exception of the chapters that would have left the story feeling unfinished, atleast where I am leaving now could be an ending. I am working on a new story but have only just begun to plan it so if you like this short story then stick around.**

 **RWBY is owned by Rooster Teeth**

* * *

 **Chapter 11 – The Stained Road**

 **Opal Drake**

Opal sat in the center of Raalm's living room, legs crossed and deep in thought. It had been almost three weeks since they had arrived and Opal had enjoyed every day of it. The constant smell of nature that carried itself on the wind, the freedom to come and go as you please. She had spent many days of the past weeks in the trees, both inside and outside the wall, the other days had been spent doing chores around the village, mainly helping with the various animals that they kept but also doing deliveries, guard duty and occasionally she would be asked if she would like to go hunting with some of the other villagers. She actually enjoyed the work, it seemed to keep everyone in a rather happy mood as there was always things to be done to distract from the occasional Grimm attacks; though there had only been two very minor attacks so far and they had been dealt with rather quickly. The only drawback to all the work was that she didn't have as much time to train as she would usually, even though Raalm dragged her out of bed at six every morning for sparring and practice that usually lasted until around nine.

As she sat there she heard someone approach and took a deep breath, activated her aura and allowed her body to slow down, her heartbeat slowing to a crawl. Raalm walked around the corner and looked right at her with a smirk, knowing what she was doing. Opal let out the breath with a sigh and looked up at him.

"I thought you were Beth," she said in a quiet voice.

"Ahh... How long has she been looking?" He asked as he walked into the kitchen and started making himself a sandwich. "You want one?"

"Sure and about an hour," Opal replied with a smile.

"Well don't use up too much of your aura, don't forget we leave for the relay tower in two hours," he said as he took a quick look out the window. "She's coming."

"Don't worry, I wont." Opal said as she took a deep breath once again just as Raalm's little sister came running into the room and looked around, her eyes passing over Opal.

"Raalm, have you seen Opal, I cant find her again," she said, still looking around the room.

"Telling you would be cheating Beth," he replied with a smile.

She walked off into the bedrooms and quickly returned with a determined look on her face before going back outside to the garden.

"Meet me at the town hall in twenty minutes," he said as he placed Opal's sandwich on the table and turned to follow his sister out of the door. "I want to go over everything again before we leave."

Opal resumed her regular breathing and gave a nod as she stood up and sat at the table to eat her lunch. When she was nearly finished, Beth walked back through the door.

"What? Where were you?" she asked her mouth slightly ajar as Opal gave her a taunting smile.

"I was right here, you walked past me like five times," Opal replied.

"No you weren't, I would have seen you," she said, a slight pout appearing on her face.

"That's what you always say," Opal said as she stood up and took her bowl to the sink, washing it as the little girl sat down on the table and muttered to herself about how Opal was a cheater.

"Well I have to go and see your brother, see you later Beth," Opal said as she gave the sulking girl a pat on the head, picked up _Estía_ from near the doorand left the house.

A gentle wind swept across her face, bringing with it the smell of flowers as she stepped outside and Opal looked at the sky and saw that it was going to be another warm day as not a single cloud could be seen in the vast stretch of blue and the sun shone brightly. The area around her was currently empty as everyone was either working or enjoying their time off, something that Opal had discovered was very rare around here if you were not a visitor. She made her way through the village toward the town hall, seeing only a few villagers along the way. The town hall was strategically placed in the exact center of the village so that they would always have time to call for help if there was an attack from any direction and as the village wasn't too big, it was never far for people that couldn't fight to take shelter.

The walk took less than five minutes and as she approached the town hall, she saw Raalm and is father Malik talking in front of it having what looked like a rather heated discussion. Malik was a very kind man from what she had seen but he was always thinking about the safety of the village and the people who lived there and as a result could often come off as intense and stubborn. Raalm looked up as she approached and signalled to his father that he needed to get ready.

"We'll talk about it more when you get back." she heard Malik say as he sighed and walked off, most likely towards one of the guard houses to take over a shift.

"What was that about?" Opal asked out of curiosity, as it was rare to see Raalm and his father disagree on anything.

"Beth asked him to teach her how to fight last night," he replied with a perfect mimic of his father sigh.

"Is that a good or bad thing?" Opal asked.

"That depends on how you look at it; personally, I think it would be good for her to be able to defend herself but dad is worried she would try to help during attacks instead of staying in the basement of the town hall," Raalm said while he turned to walk into the town hall, followed closely by Opal.

"What does Eris think?" Opal asked even though she figured she knew that answer.

"She told dad she would kick him out if he even thought about training her," Raalm paused. "I don't think she really would kick him out, but I guess she's already worried enough with one of her kids out there fighting Grimm and another..." Raalm trailed off.

Opal had heard very little about Raalm's older brother apart from the picture she had seen on the house mantelpiece,which she had mistaken for Raalm at first, but she knew that he had left the village eight years ago when he was eighteen after a massive fight with Malik and had never came back or even contacted them. They had sent search parties out to look for him for months but had failed to find anything. Opal hoped he was okay, at least for Raalm's sake.

As they walked into the town hall Opal looked around, it wasn't a big building like you would find in the city but simply a large room filled with chairs and a desk near the far wall where the village leaders sat during meetings. Behind the desk was two doors that each led to stairs that allowed you to climb up to the guard tower, though that was off limits to anyone not on guard duty. In the corner lay a metal trapdoor that lead into a secure room beneath the town hall that was used during Grimm attacks. Opal followed Raalm to the desk and began to pull the papers on it towards him.

"Okay," he began. "We set off from here," he said pointing to Lenter on a map. "We'll be taking this path as it will lead us straight to the relay tower and it should take no longer than an hour by foot," he traced his finger along the shown path and continued. "Now the main problem is the Grimm. Up to here," he pointed to a large clearing on the map between the village and the tower, "we can try and outrun them but if they are still with us by the time we reach there then we have to fight, we cant afford to lead them to the tower," he paused for a second. "I know we can handle them but out there a situation can turn around in an instant and more will be drawn by the fighting so I want to keep combat to as little as possible. We avoid what we can but after we reach the clearing, nothing that spots us can live," he paused to look up at Opal who gave him a quick nod. "Now on the off chance we get separated and there's too many Grimm for us to handle alone, there's an abandoned temple near the relay tower that extends above the treeline and at the top is a flare gun we can use to signal for help. If everything's fine then we will meet at the tower."

"Got it," Opal replied with a nod of her head while pulling the map towards her and studying it once again, memorizing the route.

As Opal surveyed the map, Raalm pulled his metal backpack off and began checking it over, pulling the pieces apart and cleaning out the dust compartment. Opal had always liked Raalm's choice of weapon as it suited his vicious, controlling fighting style hauntingly well as it allowed him to mix up his attacks, whether that was having the chain around his fist to improve his punches, using it to pull in his enemies or striking from a distance with whipping attacks; and all that was without the fire spewing kunai that often left you with no safe place to dodge to. He had stayed third on the leader board since the beginning of the year and Opal always had a very tough time during their fights.

She finished looking over the map and pulled out her own daggers, giving them a quick check. They shined as she pulled them from their sheaths, light danced around the metal and as she held them up she saw her own face reflected in them. She took care of her weapons everyday, oiling, polishing, and sharpening them after every use; though this was a little unnecessary as the special metal they were made from didn't rust. After a quick check, she deemed them acceptable and returned them to their sheaths as Raalm pieced his weapon back together and slung it back into position.

"Meet me at the gate, I need to grab something," Raalm said and walked out of the building.

After ten minutes of waiting, Raalm finally showed up with something that surprised Opal. A holster was strapped to his left leg and within it was a rather nasty looking pitch black gun. Opal couldn't see much of it except for the inch long spines lining the top of the barrel that looked like they could shred anything with ease and the inward angled handle that made it look very uncomfortable to hold.

"Since when did you own a gun?" Opal asked, her voice full of surprise.

"It belonged to an old friend, he left it behind," he said, lifting is hand to stroke the blonde streak in his hair.

Opal had notice that he often did that when he thought he was alone or when he was studying extra hard but she had never thought to ask him about it; though it clearly meant more to him than she thought and though she had asked his mother about it when they arrived, she had not really given much of an explanation. But it was not the time for that conversation.

"Do you know how to use it?" she asked, genuinely unsure.

"As much as my chain," he replied. "But they don't go too well together so I left it behind."

"Then why take it now?" Opal questioned.

"Might need the extra range," he said dryly, clearly not telling the whole truth.

"Okay, shall we get going then?" Opal asked.

Raalm gave a nod to the man operating the gate and began to walk out as it opened. Opal followed, drawing _Timí_ from his sheath so that she was prepared to attack at a moments notice.

It had been ten minutes since they had left the village and they had found themselves having to hide behind a tree as they saw a pack of Beowolves stalking the forest; though they were much easier to avoid on foot. Opal held her breath as the Grimm passed, Raalm doing the same next to her.

After a minute, the threat had passed and Raalm gave the all clear for them to keep moving. Opal moved out from behind the tree and onto the path they had been following.

"That's two packs in ten minutes," Opal whispered to Raalm.

"It should thin out soon, there are always quite a few near villages," Raalm replied.

Opal continued to follow Raalm down the path for a few minutes until she saw black blur amongst the trees. Raalm seemed to have noticed it too because he stopped and drew out his gun upside down, his little finger on trigger. He clicked a button near the magazine and with a slight whirring, the barrel spun around to rest along his arm. Opal followed Raalms lead and pulled _Éleos_ from her sheath as an Ursa came barrelling onto the path.

Raalm rushed forward and swung his fist at the monstrous bear, the spikes tore through its arm and opening a large jagged wound in its chest causing it to collapse forward as Raalm swung the bladed arm once again and severed its head from its neck. As two more burst onto the path, Opal rushed forward and quickly dispatched them, her mirrored daggers flashing gold in the sun as they sliced quickly and precisely.

Opal looked around and saw nothing but trees, the fight having alerted no other Grimm to their presence. As Raalm returned the gun to its original position, Opal saw the word _Severity_ etched into the side before he slid it back into the holster.

They continued to walk in silence for another ten minutes until Opal finally decided to ask the question that was on her mind.

"Why is it called severity?" She asked. "That seems kind of dark."

"A little but its just a truth really," Raalm stated with a blank expression. "My friend believed that humanity has never seen a bright day, that throughout all the happiness we feel there is always a layer of fear. He named his weapon after that belief to constantly remind himself of how fucked up the the world is."

"I'm starting to see why your so grumpy," Opal teased.

"Well he also loved puns," Raalm smiled back.

That comment took Opal a minute to figure out before she finally understood what he meant and smiled back.

Five minutes later they had reached the clearing and both of them checked the way they had come to see if they had been followed. With everything looking clear they continued ahead.

"Opal, go up into the trees, whistle if you see anything coming," Raalm ordered.

Opal returned her daggers to their sheaths and ran up the closest tree and grabbed a branch to pull herself up. As she steadied herself she pulled _Estía_ from her back and readied an arrow.

She jumped from limb to limb with the ease of a monkey as she followed Raalm closely, keeping an eyes out over her side for any signs of activity. Fortunately she had seen none so far, though they did hear a loud crashing noise up ahead did cause them to stop. Raalm signalled for Opal to go on ahead and check it out discreetly and she picked up the pace, flying through the trees with no resistance stopping only when she arrived at the cause of the sound.

Opal almost threw up at the sight that laid before her. A wagon had been flipped onto its side, the horses nowhere to be seen and the contents spilling out all over the path, and beside it were three Beowolves; their mouth dripping with blood as they ripped the flesh off of the two men laying next to it, one torn in half leaving blood and guts trailing across the path where his body flew and the other still alive but the cuts to his throat made him unable to scream. Opal pulled back the arrow and let it fly straight into the back of one of the beast's head, the other two barely had time to look up as another pair of arrows struck them square in the face.

Opal jumped down from the tree and ran over, the stench of blood greeted her as she got close and pulled the smoking Grimm off of the dying man. He looked at her with eyes full of tears and she knelt down and took one of his hands into hers. She looked down over his body and saw large chunks missing from his side and knew he would not last much longer.

"Its okay, I'm here," she smiled down at him, trying to be comforting. "Your going to be fine."

The man shook his head slowly, knowing she was wrong but his eyes seemed glad that someone was there. He coughed, causing blood to spray from his mouth, and looked Opal in the eye, a slight peaceful smile making its way across his face as he closed his eyes and his head fell lifelessly to one side. She shook him gently and tried to wake him up, a tear falling down her cheek. As she did when suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"He's gone Opal," Raalm said. "There was nothing you could do."

"Maybe if I had..." She began only to cut herself off. The man in her arms was the first. The first person she had ever seen die. The first person she had not been able to save and she didn't even know his name.

"We can't save them all," Raalm said as he pulled Opal to her feet. "Now we have to get to the tower, once we're there we can call and have someone come and pick them up."

"Their bodies wont last that long," Opal said, looking directly at Raalm with a pleading look.

"It's the best we can do," he replied, shaking his head.

Opal moved over to the wagon and began to search it quickly, finding a blanket. She returned to the bodies and threw it over them, hoping to at least block some of the smell, though she knew it would do no good. With one final look she turned away from the bodies and walked over to Raalm.

 _I'm sorry_ ,was all she could think as they walked the rest of the way to the tower, the image of the man's final smile etched into her mind.


	12. Forgotten Affections

**Chapter 12 – Forgotten Affection**

 **Garrick Cane**

The sound of the door slamming shut as Jess left the room caused Garrick to flinch. He stared at the door for a minute before he fell onto his bed and closed his eyes. For the past two weeks him and Jess had been almost none stop arguing and he wasn't sure if their relationship would survive this time. Jess seemed to be finding new problems everyday and Garrick barely had the energy left to fight any more. He thought back to the first week of the holiday that had passed peacefully and sighed as a someone knocked on his door.

"Come in," he shouted, not getting up from his bed.

"I heard you two shouting again," his mother said gently as she walked into the room. "What was it this time?"

"I honestly have no idea," Garrick sighed. "When I got back I thought that things would work themselves out but they just seem to be getting worse, you got any advice?"

"Well this has been going on for a while now, the only advice I can give is that you both need to talk about what it is you want," his mom replied. "I think you should both sit down and have a real talk about it. No shouting, no arguments, just talk. Whether you come away from it together or if you break up, at least you can put an end to all the fighting."

Garrick stay quiet for a minute and thought about what he wanted. They had been together for three years and it had been the happiest of his life. She had been there for him when his father died and helped him throughout Signal Academy but he had to agree that for the past few months it had seemed like there was barely anything left to hang onto. The time was spent either in silence with each of them doing their own thing, or with them arguing loud enough for the neighbours to hear but through all of that he still loved her and he wasn't sure he was ready for things to end.

"I'll leave you alone to think," his mother said, patting his arm and leaving the room.

As soon as his mother left he turned and pick up his scroll, opened up the messenger and typed out a message. " _Hey there brother, are you going to be in town anytime soon? I need some advice."_

 _"I can come in this Friday. Wanna meet a Junior's club around 9?"_ The reply said.

 _"Sure thing, see you there."_ Garrick replied.

 **Friday night**

Garrick stepped out of the shower and dried himself off, getting ready for a night out. Once he was dry he walked over to the beside table and picked up his magnetic clamp and tied the straps around his chest before he walked over to his bed and slid on his clothes. He had decided to go with his usual black and silver jeans and a simple black shirt for the night , nothing fancy but it would get him into the club. Fully dressed, he pulled his mace from his bed and pressed it against his back, the magnet activating and producing enough pull for it to secure the mace in place. He left his room and walked down stairs and was prepared to leave when his mom stopped him.

"Where are you going, its nearly nine," she said, hands on her hips.

"A friend of mine is in town for the night so I told him I would meet him, I promise I'll be back in time to get some rest for work tomorrow," he replied.

His mother simply shook her head and walked off back to the front room. Garrick hated disappointing his mother but he needed the night out so he pulled open the door and stepped out into the empty, dark street. As he walked, he thought about the past week, he had only seen Jess at work since their last argument and even there they didn't talk unless they needed to. A car zoomed past, snapping him out of his thoughts and bringing his attention back to the streets.

The walk to the club only took thirty minutes and as he approached the street the club was located on he saw a familiar figure standing against a wall, his red jacket and the blonde streak in his hair standing out in the night. The young man saw him approach and pushed himself off the wall to walk towards Garrick.

"Long time no see brother," Garrick said as he pulled Raalm into a one armed hug. "You know you will return one of those hugs one day."

"I doubt it," Raalm replied with a smirk. "Felly's shift starts soon so we should get going," he said starting a slow walk.

"So how are things in the village?" Garrick asked.

"Last time I checked they were fine but I was away for a couple of days and came here pretty much straight after me and Opal got back from our mission," Raalm replied.

"Ahh yeah... Opal told me about what happened on the way there, hows she doing now?" Garrick asked.

"She still wakes up in the middle of the night but she's doing better I guess," Raalm paused. "I've tried to tell her there was nothing she could have done but she still blames herself for not being fast enough."

"Well its the first person she ever saw die and those things stick with, I'm sure you remember yours," Garrick said.

"Not really, I grew up in a village the was constantly under attack so I've seen death my whole life, you learn to handle it," he said with a slight chill to his voice.

"Maybe its easy for you but not everyone can just move on Raalm," Garrick said.

Raalm stopped and turned to face Garrick. "It's still never easy to see people die and its great that she still has enough humanity to feel bad about not being able to save someone but we're training to be warriors Garrick, that man wont be the only one she fails to save and she can't shut down every time someone dies," Raalm said, his voice rose slightly but there was no anger there. "In a perfect world she wouldn't have to get use to it but that's not a world we live in."

"I get that Raalm, I do," Garrick said as he placed a hand on his friends shoulder. "And I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you don't care, I know you do."

"Just forget it okay," he said, shaking his head. "Lets just go and get a drink, you said you needed advice."

Garrick walked alongside Raalm to the club, both of them silent after their discussion but neither of them mad. They enter the door of the club and walked straight passed the line to the bouncer. A man wearing a black hat and suit with a red tie looked at them and rolled his eyes as they approached.

"What do you two want?" The man sighed, his eyes drawn to the chain on Raalm's arm.

"Well hello to you too Felly," Raalm said. "We're just looking for a place to hang out for the night."

"Stop calling me that, my names Felix now find somewhere else. It took us all day to clean up after the last time you came here," the man replied as he straightened his hat.

"You wouldn't have had to if your boss didn't attack me," Raalm sneered.

"Look, we don't want to cause any trouble, we just want a drink," Garrick said, putting his hand up to tell Raalm to be quiet.

Felix sighed, obviously to tired to argue with them. "Fine, but no trouble this time," he pressed a button and a pair of sliding doors opened, allowing fast paced music to flood out of them.

"Thanks," Garrick said to Felix is as he passed before turning to Raalm. "See how much better things go when you let me do the talking."

The club was mainly a large open space with a raised dance floor surrounded by plastic trees that changed the colours of their leave from red to white. On one side of the room was a bar with a wide selection of drinks, ranging to simple vodka and whisky to more exotic things that Garrick had no idea about, though he was pretty sure some of them were probably illegal. A high platform stood opposite the door upon which a DJ wearing a black and red bear head was bouncing up and down in time with the music. The room itself changed colour repeatedly from red to white to black, pausing only for a brief moment on each colour.

They walked through the crowd of people, heading towards the bar and sat down in one of the many stools that lined it and began to talk while they were waiting for a bartender.

"So, what do you want advice on?" Raalm asked.

"Jess and I are having problems and I..." Garrick started off only for Raalm to snicker at him.

"End it," Raalm stated simply.

"Just like that, you didn't even hear me out," Garrick replied stunned, Raalms quick reply having caught him off guard.

"Look, I haven't know you for as long as she has but I have spent quite a lot of time with you over the past year and I can honestly say that for the past four months, the only time you have been unhappy is when you were talking with her," Raalm said, raising his voice to be heard over the music.

"But we've been together three years and when I got back home everything was fine for a while," Garrick tried to explain.

"Of course everything was fine, it was the momentary euphoria of you being back, that doesn't mean the problems had gone away," Raalm replied. "I understand that you have both tried to keep holding on to it because its your first real relationship but its been four months and your still arguing."

"So your saying it would be better to end it?" Garrick asked.

"I didn't say that, I said that _I_ personallythink you should end it, not that it would be better," Raalm stated blankly. "Anyway why are you asking me? I've never even been in a relationship."

Garrick was about to respond but a man in a white shirt and black vest slammed his fist down on the bar hard enough to cause the empty glasses to bounce and fall over.

"What are you two doing back here?" He asked, a frustrated look on his face.

"Well we would be drinking but your service is REALLY slow," Raalm fired back.

"Raalm, be quiet," Garrick sighed. Raalm and Junior had never got along and most times they met it would often end in a fight.

Junior sighed and pulled two beers from under the counter. "He still has no social skills," he said as he pulled the caps off and passed one to each of them.

"He does, just not with you," Garrick smiled back, taking one of the beers and handing Junior the money for them which he put into his pocket and walked off with one last sneer at Raalm.

"You have got to stop fighting with him or he will stop serving us and then where will we drink," Garrick said to Raalm with a smile.

"He started it, besides he's a scumbag," Raalm countered.

"True but he's a scumbag that provides us with alcohol," Garrick countered back.

Raalm grunted in response and took a sip of his beer. "So what do YOU want to do about Jess?" He asked.

"I don't know, part of me wants to try and make things better but there are days when I don't think there's anything left to fight for," Garrick replied.

"What does Jess think?" Raalm asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Garrick sighed.

"So you haven't sat down and talked about it yet?" Raalm questioned.

"No, I wanted to hear what you thought before I made my decision," Garrick said.

"And once again, how am I supposed to know?" he countered. "You think I don't know that everyone in our year calls me heartless."

"That's just because they don't bother to get to know you properly, you may come across that way to strangers but anyone who knows you understands that you show compassion differently," Garrick said. "And besides, you've never given me bad advice."

"Okay, you want my advice on what to do," Raalm started. "Well both you and Jess are in this relationship together so you cant make a decision wholly on your own, if one of you decides to keep trying and the other decides they want to end it then it will end so there's no point talking about this with me. You should be talking to her."

"Do you ever get tired of being right?" Garrick sighed after a second of thought as he raised the beer to his lips and took swig.

"You never complain when I give you the answers for your homework," Raalm fired back. "Besides, if you two break up then at least that gives you and Evie a shot."

Garrick almost choked on his beer as he spat out what he hadn't swallowed yet. Coughing, he looks over at Raalm,who's face looked as if he just received a library's worth of books for his birthday.

"What the hell man?" Garrick asked, completely caught off guard.

"Oh come on, I'm not the only one who thinks it, Mark and Valarie asked Opal if you and Evie were dating three times this year," Raalm said with a smirk on his face.

"Of course they did, they're the biggest gossips in the school," Garrick sighed. "But no, admittedly Evie is very attractive in a cute way and she's a wonderful person but I have honestly never had any romantic feelings towards her."

"Okay I wont bring it up again," Raalm said, the smirk still stretched across his face

"Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you about Evie as well," Garrick remembered. "Have you ever noticed anything weird about her?"

"I live with you Garrick, everything seems normal in comparison," Raalm joked but stopped once he saw a more serious look of concern on his face. "But no, I haven't. What type of weird thing are you talking about?"

"Well, the day you and Opal left, she came to the bakery and had one of her panic attacks, and when I reached out to comfort her," Garrick paused for a second. "It was like a wave of fear washed over me, but it wasn't my fear, it was like the Faunus side of me was terrified. Have you ever felt anything like that around her?"

"Okay first off, you should not have reached out, panicking people like space," Raalm started. "And no, I've never felt scared around Evie and I've seen have multiple panic attacks but then again I'm not part animal."

"Do you think she might be hiding something?" Garrick asked.

"Maybe, everyone has secrets," Raalm replied. "Have you talked to her about it?"

"Yeah, she said she didn't know what it was," Garrick said.

"You might have been imagining it, like that time you threw your mace across the room in Professor Ports class because you swore that you saw a rabbit," Raalm replied, the smirk beginning to return to his face.

"Hey, I still stand by what I saw and you know Port, he brings in all sorts of weird shit, I wouldn't be surprised if he brought that in just to torment me," Garrick fired back causing Raalm so let out a rare laugh.

"I still don't get why you're scared of rabbits, you're fine with rabbit Faunus" Raalm said, finishing off his beer and signalling the bartender for another.

"If I knew myself I would work on it, beside I'm sure there's things you're scared off," Garrick replied.

"Sure, one being whatever stupid plans you will drag me into next year," Raalm smiled back. "Though that fear is not unwarranted seeing as I lost count of how many detentions I had this year because of you."

"You could have backed out any time you wanted," Garrick said.

"If I had then you would have probably got suspended at best," Raalm countered.

"I never did anything that bad," Garrick said, pretending to be insulted.

"Are you forgetting the time the entire third year dorm had to be evacuated because you set off like ten stink bombs in Team Sapphire's room?" Raalm asked.

"They cleared out the smell fairly quickly, and I only did that because they were bullying Evie about her stutter," Garrick replied.

"And once again we are back to Evie, I think I know what your problem is," Raalm joked, letting out another small chuckle.

"Still not funny," Garrick said, shaking his head at Raalm. "I could easily let slip to Valarie that you have a crush on me, pretty sure she would buy it."

"Please don't, she would probably break down over the fact that I stand more of a chance with you than she does," Raalm groaned. "Why don't you like her anyway."

"She's fucking crazy," Garrick laughed. "I'm all for people openly being who they are but if I started dating her then she would probably chain me to a chair so that I could never leave her."

"Okay, you are probably not wrong about that but it would be entertaining to watch," Raalm said, the smile returning to his face.

"Screw you," Garrick smiled as he looked down at his watch and and let out a sigh as he saw that it was almost eleven. "I should be getting home, I have work tomorrow."

"Do you mind if I crash at yours for the night?" Raalm asked as he stood up.

"You have nowhere to stay?" Garrick asked, remembering that Raalm had only come into town to see him. "Wait how did you get here anyway?"

"My dad was doing a supply run so I came with him in the Village's truck," Raalm said, signalling the bartender for two more beers and holding out the money as Garrick stood up. "My dad has some friends in town but they only have one spare bed."

"Ahh... Then sure thing," Garrick smiled as he took the beer from the bartender and they both turned to exit the club.

As they exited the club and entered the empty street, Garrick heard Raalm give a sigh. He knew that Raalm didn't really like the club too much but it was still a place that they would go when they needed to talk about personal matters. The two of them walked back, the occasional joke being shared but mainly in silence as Raalm looked to be thinking about something but Garrick knew there wasn't really much point in asking because he would simply say it was nothing as usual.

The walk back seemed home felt shorter with company and at was long before they were both walking into his house and climbing the stairs to bed.

"I swear, if you get naked, I will chop it off," Raalm said as he took his chain and jacket off and climbed into the bed.

"Aww man, just when I thought the night was getting fun," he joked back as he removed _Berserker_ from his back and pulled his shirt off to remove the magnetic clamp before also climbing into the bed. "Can we at least spoon?"

Raalm sighed and turned away as Garrick laughed and reached for his scroll and typed out a message to Jess.

 _"We need to talk, can we go somewhere after work tomorrow?"_

 _A_ fter a couple of seconds, his screen lit up and showed two simple letters.

 _"OK."_


	13. What Is Truly For The Best?

**Chapter 13 – What Is Truly For The Best?**

 **Raalm Neeth**

Raalm picked himself off the ground and swung around to face the man standing before him. He wore a black trench coat with silver lines weaving themselves around in various intricate and beautiful patterns and a simple pair of black jeans. His clothing made his white skin and blonde hair stick out in an odd way but it was because of that that Raalm could easily make out the smirk stretching up one side of the man's wrinkled face, narrowing his left eye. Raalm stood up and flung his chain at the man as hard as he could but he caught in with ease.

"Your still arching your arm inwards and its making you lose the power," the man said as he threw the chain back at Raalm. "I thought we went over this, once your arm is fully extended you need to bend your elbow. That's where the power come from."

Raalm growled out of frustration and whipped the chain at the man again only for it to be caught but this time he was ready. As the man's fist closed around the chain, Raalm put all of his force into one quick pull and dragged the man towards him. Once he was close, Raalm struck out with his fist and aimed for the man's amused face. His punch missed. The man had easily sidestepped it and wrapped his hand around Raalm's neck, shoving him into a wall of the building right behind him, quicker than Raalm could blink.

"Anger is useful but on a battlefield it will get you killed," The man said.

Raalm was about to respond but the man began to shake him.

"Raalm. Raalm. Come on, time to wake up." the man voice said in a loud voice.

Raalms eyes flew open and he found himself staring into a familiar pair of blue eyes.

"So... Are you going to punch me or not?" Garrick asked after a second of silence.

Raalm was confused by this question until he realised that his breaths were coming short and fast. He looked down and saw his hand clenched into a fist and slightly raised from the bed.

"Sorry," Raalm said and he took a deep breath and allowed his hand to relax.

"Its fine, it looked like you were have a pretty rough dream," Garrick said as he backed off and allowed Raalm to sit up. "What was it about?"

"Nothing," Raalm sighed as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. "What time is it?"

"Its just gone nine, figured you would want me to wake you," Garrick said as he walked toward the door. "You should take a shower before you leave, you stink of sweat. You can probably find a t-shirt in the wardrobe from when I was twelve, it should fit you," Garrick teased as he left and shut the door.

Raalm stood up and walked over to the wardrobe, looking for a shirt that would fit him. After a minute of searching, he found a plain black t-shirt that looked to be almost his size. He pulled off his own t-shirt, throwing it into a chair by the window, and laid the clean one on the bed before left Garrick's bedroom and made his way towards the bathroom. The shower only took Raalm five minutes and afterwards he quickly dressed and made his way downstairs to the bakery where he was greeted by Jess and Garrick's mom.

"Oh hello Raalm, Garrick didn't tell me it was you he was going to meet," she said, placing a tray of freshly cooked biscuits on the side for Jess to sort out.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about dragging your worker out so late last night," Raalm replied with his best smile. He did his best to be as respectful as possible around her since she was always really nice to him so. "We were in desperate need of a team talk."

"Well, if it was that important I suppose I cant be too mad at you," she smiled as she pulled a blueberry muffin from the shelf and passed it to him. "Jess, do not let him pay for that muffin," she said before heading back into the kitchen. Raalm knew he could eat for free but he had a tendency to pay for what he ate anyway.

"Okay Mrs Cane," Jess shouted after her while doing her best not to look at Raalm.

"I'm not mad at you Jess," Raalm said to her. It was the truth, despite the pain she had caused Garrick, he knew she was a kind and well meaning girl and the two of them were actually on rather good terms. "I know your not trying to hurt him."

Jess gave a nod and began to sort out the biscuits as Garrick walked in from the storage room.

"Are you leaving already?" he asked. "I thought you would at least stick around to watch the Mistral regional finals, that Pyrrha girl is in it again."

"Sorry, I've kept my dad waiting long enough," Raalm said, holding his hand out to Garrick. "Let me know who wins."

"Will do," he said , grabbing Raalm's arm and pulling him into a hug as usual, though this time Raalm half-heartedly returned it. "Have a safe drive home and give this to Opal for me," he said as he released Raalm and pulled a small package from the pocket of his a apron.

"What is it?" Raalm asked surveying the small box.

"Just something I saw and I figured she would get a kick out of it," he said with a smile.

"Alright then," Raalm said, a little confused. "I best be off," Raalm said as he made his way to the bakery door and stepping outside into the busy streets of Vale.

As Raalm walked down the streets towards the place they had parked the truck, he thought back on the memories he had made down here over the past year. One particular memory that stood out was Garrick chasing Opal half way across the city because she had shot a bagel out of his hand from a distance for the fourth time that day; though Garrick deserved it as the day before, he had decided to go up to a random girl and talked about how much Opal was in love with her but that was pretty much the relationship for those two, torment and retaliate. Another memory sprang out at him, as he walked past the pet shop, of the time he had bought a rabbit and hid it in Garrick's bed; though that was probably not the best idea since Garrick had thrown the bed across the room and smashed it to splinters the second he saw the furry critter which lead to them having to share a single bed for the night. The rabbit survive thanks to Evie but it was now the pet of Team VERT.

The walk to the truck only took him a couple of minutes and as he approached he saw his father leaning against it, looked tired but ready for anything as usual. He noticed Raalm as he got closer and pushed himself up, searching his pockets for the keys.

"Did you have a fun night?" he asked as he found the keys and opened the door to the truck.

"Wasn't too bad," Raalm replied as his father open the other door, allowing him climb in.

As he settle into the seat, he pulled the blueberry muffin from its liner and began to eat it as his father started up the truck and pulled onto the road heading toward Vale's southern exit. It wasn't until they had finally left the walls of vale that he finally spoke again.

"So... Have you given any thought to what you're going to do about Beth?" he asked.

"No need," he sighed. "Your mom is dead set against it so I guess the answers no."

"But she needs to know how to protect herself," Raalm began.

"I know, that's why I'm going to teach her how to use a gun instead," he said, cutting Raalm off.

"Guns are not always reliable; besides, I doubt mom will be any happier with her fifteen year old daughter carrying a gun around," Raalm replied, earning a little silence from his father.

"I know but what other choice do I have?" He asked after a minute of thought.

"You could let me and Opal train her a little," Raalm said, pushing on before his father could interrupt him again. "You tell her no and I will tell her that I'll teach her a couple of things while in here. That way mom's not pissed at you and Beth still get some training."

"I can't let you do that Raalm, what if your mom finds out," he sighed after taking another moment to think.

"Then I'll take the blame," Raalm said as soon as his father finished. "Look, I know mom is worried about her turning out like Kaylum but she is so different from him, for a start she's not a selfish prick."

"Raalm," his father snapped at him.

"Look dad, Beth needs training, even if it's just a little because a gun is not going to help her much when a Grimm gets in close and she doesn't know how to react properly," Raalm said ignoring his father. "You know I'm right and so does mom, she's just to scared of losing her to admit it."

"That's enough," his father said, his voice now tinged with a hint of annoyance. "I've made my decision."

Raalm sighed and shook his head as he turned to look out the window. His father had always been a stubborn man but Raalm thought that the safety of his daughter would be enough to make him reconsider his decision. Apparently he was wrong.

The rest of the ride past in tense silence, thought this didn't bother Raalm as he considered tense to be his natural state. His father on the other hand kept shuffling around in an irritable manor until he finally took his frustrations out by speeding up and turning a lone Grimm that had wondered on the path to pulp. After that he seemed a little more relaxed but Raalm still noticed him shoot an occasional glance his way. A couple of hours later they had arrived at the village and Raalm jumped from the vehicle without a word to his father and walked towards their house, glad to be away from him.

He entered the house and found the front room empty, something he would usually be glad of because he could read in peace but right now he needed to vent his frustrations and to do that he needed Opal. He moved through to his sister's room where Opal was staying and saw only his sister laying on he bed, doing one of her puzzles.

"Have you seen Opal?" he asked, his voice coming out a little more rough than he had intended and Beth seemed to have noticed it too.

"She said she was going to watch something, not sure what," she said as she looked up from her puzzle. "Is everything okay?"

"Yes," he said as he turned around and began to exit the house, now knowing exactly where Opal was.

It only took him a minute to reach the biggest tree in the village and when he did he started to climb it. The climb itself took longer than the walk to it but within five minutes he was finally near the top but there was still no sign of Opal, that was until her face popped out right in front of him and almost caused him to lose his balanced.

"What bring you to my perch?" she asked with a slight smile.

"I have something for you," he replied as Opal began to climb back up to the top of the tree with far more skill that he could ever hope to have. He followed along and by the time he reached the top Opal was already laid back along a group of branches that looked like she had knotted them together to support her.

"You bought me something from Vale?" she asked, a little confused look on her face since they were not the type to exchange gifts.

"Not me, Garrick, so I would open it with caution it I was you," Raalm replied and receive a smile from Opal as he handed her the package.

As she pulled away the wrappings, Raalm looked out at the view from the village and immediately understood why Opal liked it up here. He could see the whole village and just make out the people as they made their way through their daily lives. Just past the village was the outer forest and in the distance he could faintly make out the relay tower.

He looked back at Opal just as she pulled what looked to be a small wooden carving from the box. She looked it over and a large smile stretched over her face before she passed it along to Raalm. He took the carving and looked it over himself. It was a beautifully carved figure of a huntsman standing atop a dragon with a bow aim at its heart and hanging from the huntsman's neck was a small piece of paper with Garrick's handwriting on it that read ' _I saw this and thought of you, hopefully it will cheer you up a little_ '.

Raalm smiled is he read those words and passed it back to Opal. "One of his best gifts so far," he joked as Opal returned it to the box and handed it back to Raalm to keep safe until they got down from the tree.

"So what did you really come and find me for?" She asked. Raalm had managed to keep his emotions in check pretty well over the past year but Opal was still able to see right through him and know when he was annoyed or upset.

"I had an argument with my dad and I could use a good fight to blow off some steam," he said, not bothering to deny that he was annoyed. "You up for some sparring?"

"Sure, real fight or training?" She said with a smile.

"Technically a real fight is training," he smiled at her, letting her know it was fine to go all out against him.

Raalm began to climb back down the tree and was quickly overtaken by Opal who was jumping from limb to limb with relative ease. The climb down to far less time than the climb up but as he got to the bottom, Opal was already waiting with her arms folded and her foot tapping in mock impatience.

"How do you hope to beat me if your that slow?" she teased and the two of them walked back toward the house to put away Garrick's present.

He rolled his eyes and smiled at her. He would show her how when they started the fight. Beth greeted them as they walked into the house and put the figure on the table.

"Hey Beth, I'm about to kick your brother's butt if you wanna come and watch," Opal said to her as she did a quick check on all of her weapons.

Beth immediately jumped up and ran towards the door to wait for them with a big grin on her face. Beth would occasionally watch their training sessions when she didn't have chores to do and she always seemed to enjoy it when Opal and him sparred, though they had not had a real tournament style fight since they had been there.

"Meet us at the training building," Raalm said to his sister, gaining a nod in reply as she ran off to wait for them.

With the weapon checks over, Raalm began to tell Opal about what his father had said on the way back from Vale as they walked to the training building and wasn't surprised when she agreed with Raalm that Beth needed the training. However, their conversation ended as they entered the building and saw Beth waiting patiently for both of them behind a protective barrier.

The room itself was nowhere near as good as the training hall in beacon but it was big enough to hold a sparring area and a shooting gallery, something Opal had also been very found of since their arrival and she easily beat every rifle user who challenged her to a marksman challenge with her bow alone. The building itself was made of grey stone and was relatively new since it was him who had accidentally burned down the old wooden one with his early builds of _Wildfire._

"So... Tournament style right? We fight until our aura level drops into the red?" she asked as they step into the sparring area.

"Of course," Raalm replied as he climbed in after her and stretching out his shoulder. "Beth, you tell us when to start," he said as he turned to look at Beth and was instead greeted by a small group of people who had stopped what they were doing to watch them.

He shook his head and turned back to Opal, who already looked focused with a dagger in each hand, and got into his usual brawler stance. After a couple of seconds of waiting, Beth finally called out.

"BEGIN."


	14. Unknown Names And Familiar Faces

**Chapter 14 – Unknown Names and Familiar Faces**

 **Opal Drake**

"And you lose again," Opal said as she offered a hand down to Raalm that he accepted with a grunt.

The fight had felt more brutal than she thought it would have been and the awed looks on the faces of the onlookers told her the her feeling wasn't wrong. She looked at the ground and saw cracks and scorch marks littering the grey stone where Raalm's chain had crashed down into it, even one one the cracks looked like an impact crater and Opal guessed that that was where Raalm had shoved her head into the ground repeatedly.

She looked down at the eyes of her dragon daggers and saw that one of them was a deep red while the other was a dark orange. It had been so close a fight that she had had no idea whether she would win or not. Raalm had seemed extra vicious, often choosing to catch her blades instead of dodge then so that he could turn the fight back to his favour. He even went so far as to catch an explosive arrow and throw it back at her.

"Feeling any better now?" She asked as she helped him to his feet and smiled at him.

"Yeah," was all he replied, an ever so slight grin pushing its way onto his lips.

"Well, I'm going to take a shower," Opal said as she grabbed he bow from the floor where Raalm had thrown it and began the walk to the door.

She had barely put her hand on the door when Beth came running up to her and began with the play by play of the fight but Opal politely told her that they would talk about it later and pushed the door open to breath in the fresh air. It may have only been a few minutes but she had already began to miss it. The training room was great but it lacked the smell of the trees that Opal loved so much, a smell that made Opal not want to go back to Beacon as she knew that she would miss the constant smell of nature that permeated the air of the village.

As she walked towards Raalm's house, she looked at her favourite tree. She had found it on her second week here and it had quickly become her favourite part of the whole village, though there wasn't a single bit of the village that she didn't like. The people here had all treated her as family and welcomed her as if she as one of them almost straight away. This was truly there first place she had ever felt like she had found somewhere she truly belonged instead of somewhere she had just landed.

As she arrived at Raalm's house, she opened the door and placed her weapons on the table next to it as she walked in, making sure that she remembered to clean them after her shower. She slowly navigated her way to the bathroom and locked the door, breathing out a sigh of relief at the silence. The fight had taken much more out of her than she had originally thought. She hurt all over from Raalm's punches as despite her aura being able to deflect the damage of the punches, she still felt a lot of the impact. Opal slumped down against the door and took a moment to relax now that she was alone before she finally stood up and turned the shower on.

The water felt amazing against her skin and she would have happily stood in there all day but she had taken long enough already and she knew that the others would be back in the house and would probably need the bathroom. She stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around herself before stepping out into the hallway.

"About time," Raalm said absent mindedly while reading a book as she entered the living room, a blur of black hair zooming past her. "I thought Beth was going to wet herself."

"Why don't you seem concerned that she could have?" Opal asked.

"Because she was also complaining about being cold," he replied.

"You're gross," Opal laughed back at him as she grabbed her daggers and sat down at the table, pulling out her maintenance kit from under it.

"Are you not going to get dressed first?" Raalm asked, looking over the top of his book.

"I have a towel on; besides, you've seen me naked before," she replied while starting work on her daggers. "Also, you're a guy, why are you complaining about me not being dressed?"

"Good point," he said and put his book down to look at her for a moment before shrugging and returning to his book.

"Hey, what was that supposed to mean?" Opal said as she saw Raalm's shrug. "Are you insulting my body?"

"Your body is great, it just doesn't do anything for me," he replied, a grin starting to stretch across his lips. "Maybe you emit some sort of hormone killing pheromone."

"Oh, you mean like your semblance," Opal teased back as she finished the maintenance on _Timí_ and pulled _Éleos_ towards her.

"Unfortunately, that very well may be a possibility," he sighed.

"Relax, Ellie seems to like you so I'm sure that's not it," Opal laughed at him.

"Who's Ellie?" Raalm asked with a confused look.

"How do you not know who Ellie is? We've been in the same class for a whole year," Opal replied with her own look of confusion.

"The only people I know outside of our team is Arnold, Valarie and Mark" Raalm said plainly.

"Wait, so you mean to tell me that you remembered the weapons, tactics and weaknesses of the six other teams from our year but you didn't bother to learn their actual names?" Opal asked though the answer was already pretty clear.

"I didn't need to learn there names, none of their strategies revolve around their names so it was pointless to learn them," he replied, apparently not understanding why Opal was a little shocked at this news.

"Well anyway," she said, deciding there was no point in trying to point out why he should have. "Ellie is part of Team VERT and apparently she has a little crush on you."

"Why?" He asked.

"Right now, I honestly have no idea," Opal sighed. "What type of girls are you into anyway?" She asked as she realised that it was something they had never really talked about.

"No idea really," he said though he did seem to be bothered by his lack of an answer and took a moment to think. "I guess I like kind and quiet girls who are smart but know how to take care of themselves. Also a little quirky."

As Opal was about to reply, Raalm's mother Eris walked into the house, pulled a jar of biscuit from the shelf and sat next to her.

"Hello Mrs Neeth," Opal said politely as Eris sat down.

She smiled at Opal before turning to Raalm. "Your father told me that you and him had an argument," she said a tinge of tiredness in her voice.

"All I did was call him out on his stupidity," Raalm said, not looking up from his book.

"Please don't talk about your father like that," Eris said, the tiredness more evident in her voice. "He's only doing what he feels is best."

Opal decided that now was a good time the go to her room and dry herself as she knew that Raalm was about to start an argument and as much as she felt Raalm was right, she respected Eris enough to not openly choose sides.

"No, he's doing it because of your fears. How about you both start being more concern about your daughter's life then your own feelings," she heard Raalm say as she entered her room and shut the door, reducing the shouts that came quickly afterwards to loud muffled noises.

While she dried herself off, Beth opened the door, walked in and quickly closed it behind her.

"Why are they arguing?" she asked as she sat down in her bed, her eyes looking over Opal's body.

"No idea," Opal lied since she felt Raalm would prefer Beth to be kept in the dark for now. " And stop staring, it's weird."

"Sorry," she said as she looked away and laid back on her bed, her face a little flushed.

"Nothing to be ashamed about Beth," Opal said to the younger girl.

"How did you know you were into girls?" Beth asked quietly after a moments of silence.

Opal stopped in the process of pulling her jeans on, caught off guard by the question. She had suspected that Beth may not be one-hundred percent straight but she couldn't have been sure and didn't quite feel like it was her place to bring the subject up. Opal finished getting changed and sat down beside her.

"Well, I figured when I was around thirteen." Opal started. "I had this friend and whenever I was around her, my heart would feel like it was going to rip out of my chest and while we were apart, all I wanted to do was be near her," Opal stopped and looked at the girl to discover that she was waiting for Opal to continue. "That's pretty much it," Opal laughed at her.

"Soo... If I feel like that, does it mean I'm gay?" She asked, looking away slightly.

"Not necessarily, you could be interested in both men and women," Opal smiled at her as she realized what Beth may be saying. "Beth, do you feel that way around someone?"

Beth looked away. "I don't know, maybe," she mumbled.

"Is it me?" Opal asked, deciding that she needed to be straight forward.

Beth gave a small nod, refusing to raise her gaze to meet Opal's.

"You can look at me you know," Opal said to her, smiling a little at how cute she was acting. Beth looked up and Opal saw that she was almost completely red. "Well I am pretty good looking," she joked at the girl.

With no warning, Beth lunged forward and kissed Opal, her lips shaking slightly as she did. Opal didn't pull away as she understood exactly what she was feeling at the moment and wanted to let her get it out. After a moment, Beth pulled away and looked straight into Opal's eyes.

"Well that was sudden," Opal said, her voice a little stiff. "And as good as it was, I can not happen again."

"I'm sorry," she said, beginning to look down.

"It's fine, how did it make you feel? Do you want to do it again?" Opal asked.

"I felt tingly and yes, a little," Beth said going even more red, if that was possible.

"Then you are either into just me or into girls in general, I cant say anything about guys though, that's a different thing all together," Opal smiled at her. "Either way, it doesn't really matter."

Opal stood up, climbed onto her bed and laid down on top of the covers.

"It sounds like the fighting has stopped so I am going to take a nap," she said while closing her eyes. "Wake me up in an hour."

Opal allowed herself to drift off to sleep, though the dream that came made it far from peaceful. The man from the road was dying in her arms again, blood cascading through her finger but this time the cause was an arrow to his chest. He was looking into her eyes and saying it was her fault, that she should have done more. She awoke an hour later to Beth shaking her shoulder.

"Its been an hour," Beth said.

"You didn't spend it watching me did you?" Opal joked in an attempt to clear her head from the dream as she sat up, causing the younger girl to go bright red.

"NO, I'm not that creepy, am I?" She replied, looking down.

"I'm kidding Beth," Opal said as she jumped down from her bed.

"Good," she said with a smile. "Raalm said he wanted to talk with you anyway, he seemed pretty serious."

Opal wiped her eyes free of sleep and looked at the younger girl. If she were a year older and not Raalm's sister then she would have actually stood a chance but for now that wasn't an option for Opal. She smiled at the girl and walked to the door and pulled it open to walk out of the room with Beth just behind her. As she entered the living room, Raalm was sat alone at the table glaring at his scroll with a blank look on his face.

"Beth said you wanted to talk to me?" Opal smiled as she approached him.

"Sit down," he said, a slight edge to his voice. "Beth can you go and see if mom needs any help in the fields?"

"But I..." Beth began but was cut short by a look from Raalm. With a nod of her head she slowly left the house leaving them both alone.

"Raalm, what's this about?" Opal asked after moment, breaking the silence that had formed around them. "If it's about what happened with Beth earlier then I can explain."

"This isn't about Beth, though you can explain that further to me later," He replied and took another short break before speaking again. "When we were at the relay tower and the people went out to collect the bodies, I asked for them to do some searching around for their identities."

Opal gulped and felt her face drain as soon as Raalm started talking and found that it took her a minute before she could speak. "Did they find anything?" Was all she could manage.

She watched as Raalm slid his scroll over to her and nodded slowly. She picked it up with shaking hands and a picture of two smiling men greeted her. After a couple of minutes, her eyes finally managed to pull themselves away from the faces to look at the names beneath.

"Their names were Jared and Lewis Prelt," Raalm said as Opal read. "They were traders from one of the bigger villages and would frequently deliver supplies to some of the more struggling communities. They usually had guards with them but the village had recently been hit by a group of bandits and the village guards were out hunting them so Jared and Lewis decided to go alone."

Opal scrolled down and was greeted by an even worse sight. The man that had died in her arms was standing with his arm wrapped around a smiling woman that was holding a child. She couldn't help but feel sick as she looked at the picture and had to slide the scroll back to Raalm.

"I know that having a name won't help much but those are the people they were." Raalm said as he placed is hand on Opal's arm. "They were good and honest people that believed it was their duty to help others. Now I'm not going to sit here and lie to you any more about how it was unavoidable because there is always something more than can be done but I will tell you this. These people wouldn't want you to be blaming yourself. They lived to make as many people happy as possible so, grieve, sleep and use this to better yourself. Honour them by making sure that you do everything you possibly can to keep this from happening to as many other people as you can." One he had finished speaking, he stood up and gave her a pat on the shoulder before leaving the room to allow her to think, his scroll still left on the table.

She thought over what Raalm had said to her for some time, occasionally looking at the scroll to look at the pictures once again and every time it made her feel sick as her breath would catch from the memories of Jared dying in her arms. Finally she shut the device down, stood up and walked into Raalm's room.

"You're right," she said as she passed the scroll back to Raalm. "But it might take a while."

"That's fine," he replied in a gentle voice. "So what happened with Beth?"

"She uhh..." Opal paused for a second. "She kissed me."

"Oh... I expected her to take longer but okay," He replied as he picked up his scroll and closed the picture.

"You knew?" Opal asked, shocked at how Raalm reacted to what she had said.

"You know that I pay more attention than I let on," Raalm replied. "I've know that she liked girls to years now, I was just waiting for her to figure it out for herself."

"Is that why you brought me here?" Opal asked, not letting on that she would be a little upset if he said yes.

"Of course not," Raalm said as he looked up to meet her eyes with a smile. "I invited you here because I didn't want you to be alone, it just so happened that you could help."

"You could have told me," she smiled back to him.

"And have you be self conscious around her?" Raalm said.

"I could have at least made sure not to change in front of her," Opal fired back at him, to which he just shrugged and pulled some data up on his scroll regarding their second year activities.

"Oh'well, what's done is done," he said looking up. "Anyway we need t..."

Raalm was cut off as a distant, high pitched scream pierced the air. His reaction was instant and he was out of the room before the scream had even stopped. Opal quickly followed and grabbed her weapons as she exited the house into the dark night. Once outside, she saw people running towards the center of town and as she looked around, she saw a black figure charging towards her on all fours, a streak of red trailed behind it from its gleaming red eyes.

Opal watched as the Ursa stopped to look at them and Raalm began to slowly walk towards it, calm and steady, every action deliberate and precise. The Ursa swung at Raalm with a giant black hand as soon as he got close but he simply carved his arm up and his chain covered fist slammed into the beast's elbow which caused it's arm to go slack, glance of his chest and bend backwards. As it Roared in pain, Raalm slung his chain at the beast's other arm and pulled backwards first and then upwards making the beast fall, its neck landing on its own claws and almost severing completely.

Opal watched those few second pass in intrigue. Her leader was known at school to be a vicious fighter but this was beyond anything she had seen him do to a Grimm. He turned around and she saw the look behind his usually calm red eyes. It was not calm. Behind them burned a contained fury that scared her. A fury that said he would tear everything apart that got in his way and Opal believed it whole-heartedly.

"Opal," he barked at her, his voice full of authority like the times he lead them in sparring class. "Go find Beth and get her to the bunker, I don't care what you have to do to get her there. After that meet me at the south gate."

"What about you?" Opal asked as she readied her bow and more screaming filled the air as a flash of red from a building catching fire lit the area up.

"I'll work on containing them and stopped as many from getting in as possible. It looks like they're coming from the eastern gate but the panic will draw more so I want you there just in case," he replied while walking backwards and turning into a run.

With no more words to be spoke, Opal pulled an arrow from her quiver and set it in place before taking off further into the village. The sights that she saw where not of a place that had felt like home moments ago, but of a complete disaster zone. In had only been a few minutes since they had heard the scream but the impact had been immediate. People ran everywhere in a panic, constantly crossing each others path to avoid the debris from buildings that lay flattened and burning. Decomposing bodies of Grimm lay strewn across the streets, most likely a result of the guards trying to get people to safety.

As she turned a corner she saw her target, a blur of black hair running at full speed towards a still standing structure with a group of Beowolves close on her heels. Opal took off after the young girl, hoping she was fast enough this time.


	15. A Home In Flames

**Chapter 15 – A Home In Flames**

 **Evie Starr**

Evie smiled at the old man who's arm she had been bandaging as one of their guards entered the tent and whispered something to her mother that caused her face to fall slightly.

"Evie, finish up, we need to get going," her mother turned and said to her while she stood up.

"I th-thought we were here for the rest of the d-day?" Evie replied, a little confused.

"We would have been but we just got an alert that a village is under attack nearby and will need urgent care," her mother said while packing up her equipment.

"N-nearby, what one?" Evie said a little urgently. She had studied the maps of the area and knew that there was only two villages close to the one they were and one of them was Lenter.

Her mother didn't have to reply for Evie to knew that her fears were right. She immediately began to pack away her own equipment, not caring about the order she put them in and within the minute she was ready to go. Five minutes later they had apologized to the head of the village, and promised they would be back, before they left the village at top speed. The drive took them almost twenty minutes at top speed and as they drew closer, Evie grew more and more worried.

The village was bright orange and casting a dark shadow over the rest of the forest. Smoke filled with embers rose in billowing folds and screams could be heard far to clearly for Evie's liking. Hulking black creatures with red eyes in varying forms surrounded the walls as they approached and their huntsmen guards mounted the truck's machine gun and began to clear a path for them. The driver brought the truck to a stop at what looked like it had once been a sturdy gate made of stone and wood but was now nothing more than pebbles and splinters.

Evie jumped out and ran towards the rubble that had once been a gate and stopped. Bodies hung over the wall next to it, both human and Grimm, both ripped apart and leaking blood down the face of the wall and staining the ground red. The guards and her mother joined her as a giant alpha Beowolf landed in front of them and caused them all to jump back slightly before seeing the condition it was in. One of its arms was missing and its jaw was practically crushed. The bone plate armor that covered its ribs was heavily cracked and blood leaked from it heavily. Evie smiled as she knew who's handy work that most likely was. And not a second later than she thought it did his chain come down like an anchor and crushed the beast's head into the ground.

"EVIE," a familiar voice shouted out at her from the direction the chain had come from.

The first thing she saw of him was his eyes, burning red in the night like the Grimm but distinctly human. Next came the jacket, pristine as always, and the jeans that were covered in ash, the grey in them having turned completely black. He emerged from the smoke and glared at Evie and her entourage.

"You picked a lousy time for a visit," Raalm said as he approached them. "What are you doing here?"

"We got an alert that a village was under attack," said the huntsman named Darius. "We came as soon as w..." He was cut of as an Ursa head came flying towards them and rolled to a stop at his feet.

A tall and well-built man emerged from the smoke and walked towards them with blood covered hands.

"Who are these people son?" he asked as he approached.

"S-sorry. Raalm, this is my m-mum and our g-guards, Darius and Sienna," Evie stuttered at Raalm who gave a nod and began giving out orders.

"Well I wish we could stand around and chat but we have a village to save," Raalm started. "First off Miss Starr, I wish we could have met under better circumstances but given your profession I would say that now is as good a time as any." he said to Evie's mother before turning to what Evie believed to be his father. "Dad, I want you to escort her to the town hall to help our wounded." He turned to Darius and Sienna next. "I want you two to cover this gate. Kill any Grimm that tries to get in or out, attacking this village was their last offence." Everyone nodded as they were given their instructions, even the two guards though a slight grimace showed that they were a little uncomfortable being told what to do by a huntsmen that hadn't graduated yet.

"What about us?" Evie asked as she drew _Lieben_ from its sheath and three lights sparked to life in the cross-guard, two pale green and one solid green.

"Me and you are going to the south gate to find Opal, and then." He said as he twitched his arm and Evie saw his chain soar past her head. Turning around she saw a Creep fall to the floor, a large gap in its chest were Raalm's chain had almost split it in half. "We are going to kill every Grimm that dared to cross these walls."

"Alright," Evie said to Raalm, head focused and ready. She turned and gave her mother a hug before standing next Raalm, waiting for him to tell everyone to go.

"What's everyone waiting for, you have your orders," he barked and turned to walk back into the village.

As soon as they entered they were greeting by two Boarbatusks that rolled straight towards them as high speed. Evie dived out of the way as they came close, she pulled _Hassen_ from its holster and fired a single ice imbued bullet into the centre of the rolling boar. She didn't need to look to know that she had hit the mark because the creature squealed as the bullet expanded into a sharp spike that punched its way into the beast's stomach and killed it instantly. Evie looked over at Raalm and saw him still walking forward, his own Boarbatusk laying dead a few feet away with its own tusk sticking out of its head.

She jogged to catch back up to him as her mother ran past, following the man that Raalm had called dad. Evie looked at her mother once more before she the turned a corner and ran out of sight. As she and Raalm approached the same turning, Raalm broke into a run down the opposite path her mother had taken and Evie easily kept up as they ran. Five minutes and numerous Grimm later they arrived at the south gate to find it in only slightly better condition that the eastern one she had entered. Rubble still littered the ground but is seemed that half of the gate had escaped most of the damage. They both looked around for Opal but saw no sign of her until an arrow soared through the air and struck an Ursa that was running towards them straight in the mouth. Evie looked around to where the arrow came from just in time to see her partner jump down from the rooftop of one of the only building in the area that still stood up straight and land in a roll. As she approached, Evie pulled her into a hug and let herself press her head into Opal chest, just to make sure she could hear her heartbeat.

"Easy there, you might give me hope," Opal said as she blushed and put her arms around Evie.

"I'm happy your s-safe," Evie smiled and pulled away to look at her partner.

She looked older. Blood and sweat covered her body and made both her hair and clothes cling tightly to her body. Her tights were shredded and her t-shirt had a large rip down one side. But other than that she looked to be just fine.

"Cuddle later, right now we have a job to do" Raalm interjected. "Opal, did you find Beth?"

"Yeah, she had a couple of cuts and bruises by the time I got to her but nothing major," Opal replied. "I took her back to the town hall and then made my way here."

"Okay," he said and Evie saw him sigh a breath of relief. "How many arrows do you have left?"

"Seven normal," she said as she walled over the the fallen Ursa and pulled her arrow free. "Eight dust."

"Okay. Evie, do you have enough dust left to keep using _Hassen_?" He asked.

Evie took a quick look at her left glove and saw that she was running a little low on ice dust but she had plenty of fire and voltage. She gave a nod to Raalm and he returned it. As they all turned around they heard a loud screech that filled the air, drowning out all the chaos around them. All three of them looked up to see a giant Nevermore circling the village.

"That Nevermore is the one that's smashing down the gates," Opal said to Raalm.

Raalm squinted his eyes at the flying beast and turned to Evie. "Do you have enough voltage dust to bring that thing down?" he asked her.

She gave him a nod. "But it will take me a m-moment to charge it up and I'll be st-stuck with fire d-dust after," she replied.

"That's fine," he replied as more Grimm charged towards them. "We'll protect you while you ready it."

Evie put her hands together and focused her aura down her arms, sparking every bit of voltage dust in both her gloves. After a couple of seconds yellow light began to glow in her hands and continued to get brighter, spilling its light over the whole area. It took a whole minute before every speck of voltage dust was sparking in her hands. She aimed her hands upwards and with one final breath, she opened them.

A giant arc of yellow lightning tore from her hands and carved its way through the sky, hunting for anything it could plunge itself into. Fortunately, Evie's aim was good enough as the lightning slammed into the oversized bird and froze it in mid air above the crop fields for a second before dissipated and let the Nevermore fall heavily to the ground.

Evie coughed and put her hands on her knees. That move was tough on her as it required all of her concentration to not let the lightning go out of control or release early. Raalm was the one that had the idea to use her gloves in such a way just in case they needed something big and Garrick wasn't around. She hadn't thought it was possible at first but after some modifications to her gloves, to increase the storage on one of them, and a month of practice, they had finally achieved it and Evie had been proud to find a new way she help the team out.

As Evie turned around, she watched as Opal pulled an arrow from a dead Beowolf and spun it in her hand before she shoved it into the final creature in the area. "Anyone up for fried chicken?" Opal smiled as she straightened up.

"Ugh.. You really miss Garrick, don't you?" Raalm said as he walked off towards the direction of the fallen Nevermore.

"A little," Opal smile back.

Evie chuckled and followed them. Even in times like these, her team was still the same deep down. Always joking and teasing each other.

They arrived at the Nevermore just in time to see it getting back to its feet and Raalm immediately swung his chain at the beast's already damaged wing, letting it wrap it around twice before he pulled back and caused it to tighten around the limb and shred through the already damaged wing. Evie saw him nod to her and she began the run towards it and jumped onto the birds back. She raised her sword and swung it at the barely connected limb just above where Raalm's chain was, severing the wing completely.

With the beast now completely grounded, they took their chance to finish it off. Raalm pulled _Wildfire_ free and clipped it onto his chain. He swung it once more, fire already spewing from the tip, and wrapped it around the birds neck before he pulled down, dragging its head to the ground, the flames sapping the creature of any strength it had left. Evie ran up to the Nevermore's neck and shoved _Lieben_ beneath the steel-like feathers, into the soft flesh between its head and torso, and pushed her sword from side to side, the golden metal shearing at the creature until finally she felt it cut through the bone and ripped her sword out the side of the beast's neck. The Nevermore collapsed to the floor, its head now swinging loosely as it fell, and Evie rolled off as it began to turn to smoke.

As she walked back over to her teammates, the whirr of an engine caught her attention and drew her gaze skyward where a large airship could be seen quickly approaching. A couple of seconds later, six men jumped from the cabin and landed directly in front of them.

"You three killed this thing?" One of the men asked as he landed and looked from them to the slowly disappearing Nevermore corpse.

"Well I didn't really do anything to it," Opal said as she slung her bow back over her shoulder.

"I'm impressed, but my team can handle it from here, you three get back to safety," he replied. "Things will go quicker if you stay out of our way," he said to Raalm who looked like he was about to interject.

Evie noticed Raalm's face form a slight sneer but instead of arguing the point he turned and began to walk. "I need to check on my sister anyway," he said.

Evie looked at the ruined village as Raalm lead them somewhere and could only imagine what he must be feeling. The place he had grown up was now more charcoal than wood and even some of the stone building had been knocked down by Grimm but as she looked at him, she saw no difference to his face. In fact he seemed to be looking at the mess with familiarity.

"Evie," he said in a voice that no longer seemed filled with anger, but still made her jump a little at the noise. "Can you check over my sister for me? You're the only one I trust enough to do it."

"Sure," she replied with a smile. Though they hadn't spent too much time together outside of combat training, the fact Raalm trusted her was something special indeed as he really didn't trust many people and he made it very clear when he didn't like someone.

The walk to wherever Raalm was taking them took a little longer because they had to turn back once or twice as they found their path blocked by debris but they eventually reached a building that looked to have survived the invasion pretty much unscathed. A few bricks were missing on one side of the wall that revealed a metal plate underneath but apart from that the building was perfectly fine. Outside stood two guards with rifles at the ready, both of them gave Raalm and Opal a quick nod as they walked past before returning to their patrol around the buildings perimeter.

She followed Raalm into the building and through a trap door opposite the main entrance. Once she had descended the steps, the sight before her was not something she had expected. Evie had expected it to be a cramped room with people huddled together but instead she was greeted by a large room filled with beds, most of which were occupied. On the walls that surrounded them were some open doors that lead to more private rooms smaller in size and only enough beds for two people. From the people she could make out in those rooms, they were reserved for the seriously injured people.

Raalm lead them around the beds, scanning the room until he finally seemed to find who he was looking for and took off towards a young girl.

"Are you okay?" he asked as he pulled her into a hug. Evie rarely saw him make contact with anyone so this was a little shocking to her, despite it being his sister.

"Yeah, a little sore though," she replied with a small grimace which caused Raalm to look in Evie's direction.

Evie gave him a smile and walked towards the girl taking a second to look at her. She had red eyes though they were not hard like her brothers but soft and warm, the kind of eyes that you could look into and feel like you were sitting next to a fire. Light freckles littered her white skin and black hair fell past her shoulders. Evie could also tell that even though the girl was sitting down, they were almost the same height.

"Hey, I'm Evie," Evie said with a smile, focusing on not stuttering as it was her experience that it made people uncomfortable to have a doctor who seemed uncertain. "Do you mind if I take a look at your wounds?"

"I'm Beth," the girl replied while giving Evie a nod.

"Beth huh, how come you have such a normal name compared to your brother?" Evie said as she took the girls arm and inspected every cut properly while activating some of her water dust just to clean them up a little.

"My mom named me after her friend who came here from the city," Beth replied while a small laugh and looked at her brother. "Dad named Raalm."

"Men come up with such terrible names," Evie smiled at her again while moving to the girls back. "Do you mind holding your shirt up a little for me?"

Beth replied and raised her shirt to allow Evie to inspect the cuts on her back. After a couple of minutes of making sure to clean the wounds, Evie let Beth put her shirt back down and stood up.

"Everything okay?" Raalm asked.

"Most of the cuts are fine but there are two I would like to stitch up, just as a precaution," Evie said and noticed Beth flinch a little.

"Do you really have too?" Beth said with a little fear in her eyes.

"Don't worry, there's no-one better than Evie," Opal said and moved forward to sit next to the girl. "Only the best doctor for the best team at Beacon," she said, giving the scared girl a smile and a little nudge.

With a smile at Opal, Beth gave a short nod at Evie. It didn't take long to find her mother, who was tending to a man with a large gash in his chest, and collect her supplies before returning to Beth and her team. She sat on the opposite side of Beth and raised the girls sleeve to uncover a deep cut that would have probably have gotten infected if she had left it untreated. Evie sorted out the needle and pulled the string through a small bottle of alcohol to disinfect it before putting her gloved hand to the cut and sparking some of her ice dust. The girl winced at first from the cold and almost tried to pull away but eventually stayed still.

"Don't you have medicine to numb it?" Opal asked.

"No sorry, mom's using most of it on the other patients," Eve replied before turning to Beth and raising the curved needle. "I've numbed the area as much as I can but this is going to hurt a little."

Beth looked a little worried at this until Opal entwined her fingers into the younger girls with a smile and drew her attention, so much that she didn't seem to notice as Evie pushed the cut together and began to sew it shut. Once she was finished, Evie moved to the girls back and began to numb the area again, this time giving Opal a quick look which Opal returned with a nod. Evie pushed the open wound on Beth's lower back together, readied the needle and pushed it into the the flesh. The reaction was instant and Opal had to pull the girl into a hug to keep her from pulling away. After another couple of minutes, Evie finally finished up and moved around to stand next to Raalm.

"The wounds were a little deep but they should be healed within about two weeks and the sutures should dissolve on their own," Evie smiled at him. "Just try not to break them in the meantime."

"Thank you," he replied before sitting down next to his sister. "How was it?" He asked her.

"The back was a little painful but it wasn't all bad," she replied with a small smile at Opal.

"Please save it for the bedroom," Raalm said as he stood up, the comment causing both Beth and Evie to redden a little.

"Wh-What does that m-mean?" Beth said, stumbling over her words from Raalm's comment.

Raalm looked like he was about to respond when his father stepped out of one of the adjacent rooms and walked over to them with a pleased look on his face. The look from Raalm however was not the same. As the man drew close, Evie only just saw Raalm's muscles flex slightly before his body lunged forward and his hand swung forward to collide with his father's face, sending him straight to the floor. "You should have been training her," was all Raalm said before he walked off towards the exit of the bunker, stepping over his father on the way, and left the room making it a little more silent than it had been moments ago.

A minute passed and Opal sighed. "I guess I should go and find him," she said as she helped Raalm's father to his feet.

"N-No, I'll go," Evie said, not wanting to be left alone with people she didn't know. "You would be b-better here," she added with a small glance at Beth who looked a little shocked at what had happened.

"Okay, he wouldn't have gone far anyway," she said, sitting back down. "Try around back, I find him there occasionally."

With a small nod, Evie set off to find Raalm. As she exited the bunker, the smell of burned wood made her nose wrinkle slightly. She had only been down there less than thirty minutes but she had almost forgotten what it looked like up here. She looked around as she made her way behind the large building and saw Raalm sitting on the floor in front of a grave. Slowly, Evie made her way over to him while feeling a little uncomfortable at the situation. Opal was usually the one who dealt with Raalm when he was feeling unsociable so she was a little nervous at being the one who had to do it this time. As she approached him, Raalm looked up but he didn't say anything, deciding to return his gaze to the grave instead. Hesitantly, she sat down next to him.

"H-Hey," Evie said quietly.

A minute passed but Raalm didn't reply, instead he simply looked at the grave. Evie stayed quiet too, unsure of what to do in this situation. She didn't want to leave him out here but neither did she want to break the silence. Finally Raalm lifted his head a spoke.

"Why did your mom let you go to beacon?" he asked, his voice rather hollow.

"Wh-What?" Evie asked back, a little surprised by his question.

"Well you not exactly the most confident person and you have a couple of problems dealing with difficult situations," he replied. "How did you convince your mom to let you go to combat school to become a huntress?"

To anyone else, this comment would have seemed rude but Evie knew that Raalm didn't mean it that way; however, it still made her feel a little weird so she took a minute before answering.

"I guess she knew how important it was to me," she replied, trying her very best not to stutter and appear to be more confident for him. "When I was younger, I would work really hard to help people. I would study everything I could about m-medicine, learn the techniques and even hang out at the hospital to learn from the doctors because I wanted so b-badly to be one. But then one day my mom took me out to one of the villages after it had been heavily attacked and what I saw ch-changed everything."

Evie paused for a minute to look at Raalm. He was paying keen attention to her and listening to every word she said.

"The people there were in horrible condition," she continued. "Most people there were ill and starving from an outbreak that had happened long before the attack but they couldn't afford the treatments the city offered. It was an easily curable disease if treated quickly but unfortunately it had been so long that it was t-too late. I decided that day that I would no longer be just a doctor. Instead I would become a huntress and do everything I could to help the people outside the kingdom's walls free of ch-charge." Evie paused for another second. "When we got home, I told my mom. She was hesitant at first but eventually I convinced her. After that I started training with a family friend and worked on designing my gloves."

Once Evie finished talking, they sat in silence for a minute. "Why do you want to become a huntsman?" she finally asked, realising that while she knew he did it to protect his village, she never knew what the cause of him deciding that was. It took him a while to reply and when he did, his voice was shaky.

"When I was younger, I had a brother," he started, not looking at Evie. "Every night when I went to bed he would read me this story about a boy who moved from Vale to a small village on its outskirts. But everyone treated him like he didn't belong there, like he was just some city boy who didn't know how to do anything. He tried so hard to help with everything but no matter what he did, they refused to accept him as one of them. Then one day, the village was attack by Grimm and while everyone else ran, he stood alone. Because even if they didn't accept him, that village was his home. He fought for hours until finally, every Grimm was dead and he stood victorious. Afterwards, the villagers finally asked him why he had done that even after everything they had done to him and he simply replied that while they didn't accept him, he loved each and every one of them as if they were his own family. After that he walked back to his house without so much as asking for a thank you."

Raalm stopped talking for a moment and Evie swore she saw cogs turning in his eyes as he thought about whether to continue or not. Eventually he did.

"Growing up I thought my brother was that hero," Raalm continued. "He was strong and kind, everything he did was for other people and he never asked for a thank you." He paused again. "But then he left."

Evie listened, she didn't want to say a word as Raalm was actually telling her about his past. Something, that she knew from the few conversations that they had over the holiday, he hadn't even told Opal.

"He left," Raalm repeated, a tinge of anger returning to his voice now. "Without a goodbye or anything. He just left. I realised that day that my brother wasn't the hero I thought he was, instead he was just one of the people who ran. He never really cared about anyone but himself so I decided I would be the hero from the story. I would be the one to protect my village and everyone I love. But today I failed that."

"Raalm, you didn't fail," Evie said in a delicate voice, moving her hand to put it over Raalm's. Surprisingly he didn't moved away from the contact.

"Of course I did Evie," He replied, a hint of sadness now beginning to overtake the anger. "Look around. The village is practically rubble and my sister was injured. I sent someone else to find her instead of going after her myself. What kind of brother does that?" His eyes found hers and they seemed to be desperate for an answer.

"You made a judgement call," Evie replied. "And Beth is fine, nothing more than a few cut."

"But it could have been worse," Raalm replied. "If Opal hadn't have been here, what would I have done? I would have had to choose between my home and my family. Could you make that choice?"

Evie shook her head. She knew what Raalm was feeling. To work so hard towards something your whole life and then to see it crumble before your very eyes was a difficult thing to come to terms with.

"No, but I'm not a leader," She replied. "Professor Ozpin gave you that role because he saw something in you and there are times when I see that hero in you myself. You may not always make the best call but you always make the right one." Evie smiled. "So stop doubting yourself."

Raalm eyes continued to look into hers. She suspecting he was looking for any trace of dishonesty but she knew that he would find none. A minute passed and she started to become very self conscious, his eyes felt as if they were starting to burn her and she suddenly became very aware of her hand touching his. Thankfully, he looked away and stood up, separating their hands but not before giving the grave one last look.

"Is th-this anyone you kn-know?" she asked, still feeling the burning of his eyes on hers.

He took a moment to answer but finally replied. "No, just another random grave," he said in a stony voice before walking off, his hand raising to brush through his blonde streak.

Evie stood up and took one last look at the grave, the name on the headstone read ' _Kris Tielon_ ' and below was a picture of a man, with blonde hair wearing a black trench coat with elaborate silver lines weaving their way throughout, implanted into the stone and protected by a clear piece of plastic. With one last look at the grave, she walked off to follow Raalm.


	16. Strengthening Bonds

**Chapter 16 – Strengthening Bonds**

 **Garrick Cane**

"Shut up," Garrick said.

"All I'm saying is that she doesn't like surprises so she will probably think this is weird," Raalm replied with a mocking grin.

"And I'm telling you she wont," Garrick said as he straightened his tie, ignoring Raalm's smile.

"Okay, but you owe me ten lien if I'm right," Raalm replied as he walked out of the room.

"You could at least put a shirt on too," Garrick shouted after Raalm.

Garrick grunted at Raalm's stubbornness but this was Opal eighteenth, there was no way they were not going to celebrate it. One he was happy with his appearance, he made his way downstairs and made sure everything was ready. While it wasn't going to be much of a party, he had made sure to get her favourite cake and even brought in some beers, which Junior had begrudgingly provide. Truth be told, Garrick would rather party at Junior's club because it would mean less clean up in the morning, but Opal refused to have anything to do with him or anything he associated himself with. Also Evie was incapable of being around so many people so it was better to have it at his house.

"What time are they due back?" Garrick asked Raalm who was sat in front of the television in nothing but his usual pair of black and grey jeans and his chain. "And put a top on."

"They should be back in about five minutes, at least that's what Evie just messaged me so about thirty minutes," Raalm said. "And no it too hot Besides, I doubt Opal cares about me being topless."

"If you're hot then take your chain off, that damn thing radiates heat like crazy, even without the canister" Garrick said, knowing Raalm would never take it off, as he shook his head and walked to the kitchen to grab a beer. "Also, Opal's not the only girl who's going to be here tonight." He heard Raalm groan at this bit of news.

"Garrick, you said it was just going to be us four," he half-shouted from the front room.

"Well it was but then I ran into Arnold, Rebecca and Tina so I invited them, I said to bring Gihl too but he's more antisocial than you are," Garrick replied, grabbing a beer for Raalm too.

"Why would you invite Tina? Don't you think it will be weird?" Raalm asked as he walked into the kitchen, pulling his red sleeveless jacket on. "There, but I'm not zipping it up," he said, adjusting his chain to fit more comfortably.

"I doubt it, Opal and Tina still get along; besides you must have noticed that Opal seems a lot easier around Evie since you two got back," Garrick replied with a smile.

"Of course I've noticed but don't play matchmaker Garrick, Opal wont like it," Raalm sighed.

"Stop worrying, I'm not playing matchmaker, just invited some friends is all?" Garrick said, passing a beer to Raalm and giving him a wink in the process, to which he just rolled his eyes and left the room.

Garrick smiled as Raalm left the room. When Raalm had arrived at his house two weeks ago, he had been far more stressed and angry than Garrick had ever seen him. Opal had said that he had a complicated relationship with his family but wasn't too forthcoming with the details. However, in the two weeks he had been back, he slowly seemed to be more relaxed and back to his normal, only slightly stressed self; though Garrick thought that tossing the team around during training had helped him more than the company.

Garrick followed Raalm and sat down on the chair to watch whatever he had been watching. It turned out to be news coverage of another Faunus rights protest that had turned violent and this time it was his turn to roll his eyes.

"Change the channel will you," he said to Raalm who willingly obliged. "Stupid Faunus, if they want to be accepted then try not attacking people just because they don't share the same views."

"Yeah well, humans are just as stupid," Raalm said, a loud ping drawing both their attention to Raalm's scroll. "That's Evie, she says they're nearly back."

Garrick took another swig of his beer and stood up to walk into the kitchen and kneel down behind the counter.

"I can still see your ears," he heard Raalm call over from his own hiding spot.

He knelt a little lower and waited until he heard the sound of laughter on the stairs leading up from the bakery and the door to the room opening.

"I can't believe she sh-shot him," Evie said as she walked in the door.

"Wasn't really her fault, it was her first time with a bow," Opal replied with a small chuckle. "Besides, he deserved it for teasing her."

She had barely finished her sentence when Garrick decided he had waited long enough and popped out of his hiding place to shout surprise, though he quickly found himself ducking again to avoid a silver dagger which flew straight between his ears and jammed itself into the cupboard behind him. As he stood up he heard snickering from across the room and saw Raalm and Evie both laughing at him.

"We warned you," Raalm laughed as he approached the red faced girl who now had one arm outstretched and the other ready to pull her second dagger free. "Happy eighteenth Opal."

It took Opal a moment but she finally spoke. "I could have killed you," She said to Garrick, finally breathing again.

"You'll have to try harder than that," Garrick replied as he pulled her dagger from the cupboard and walked over to hand it back to Opal. "But, I guess I know now not to surprise you in the future."

"Sorry," Opal replied, a little red in the face but now staring to smile again.

"Doesn't matter," Garrick replied walking over to the stereo and placing his scroll on it to start up the music. "Now, mum agreed to go out for the night so we have the place to ourself, so lets get started shall we."

Garrick walked back into the kitchen, pulled another beer from the fridge and poured a glass of orange juice before returning to the living room.

"Your first drink, plenty more where that came from," Garrick said, passing the beer to Opal. "You are not staying sober on your eighteenth."

Garrick smiled and pulled Opal into a quick hug before pulling away and walking over to give Evie her drink.

"Here you go princess. Be careful, that is hundred percent orange juice right there, we don't want you going too wild tonight," Garrick joked as he passed her the glass. Evie hated the taste of alcohol and was the biggest lightweight he had ever known. It only took four or five beers before she passed out for the night. "You will be joining us for the toast right?"

"Of c-course," Evie said with a smile. "What time do Team ARGT get here?"

"They should be here any minute, they got held up," Garrick replied while he looked at the clock.

The doorbell rang a second later and Garrick walked downstairs to open it. Outside stood more people than he was expecting. It seemed that Arnold had taken the liberty of inviting another team along from Beacon. One that filled him with dread. Team VERT.

"Hey Garrick, we ran into Valerie on our way over here and figured the more the merrier right?" Arnold said as he smiled up to Garrick.

"Uhh... Yeah sure, come on in, beer and foods in the kitchen," Garrick said to everyone, keeping a very close eye on Valarie, who winked at him as she passed, but she was not the only one who had caught his attention.

At the back of the group stood a girl with bronze hair and golden eyes that he would recognise easily as he had seen them so often. As Jess approached him, she gave him a small smile and stopped in front of him.

"Is it okay if I'm here? Because I can leave if its not," she asked cautiously.

"No, its fine," Garrick replied after a moment of silence in which he had held his breath a little. "No alcohol though, your mom would kill me."

With a smile, Jess walked off to follow the others upstairs and Garrick finally began to breath normally. The break up had not been a messy one but it had been quite difficult for them both. They had talked for a few hours until finally Jess had decided that she wanted to focus on her first year of school without distractions. Afterwards, work had been somewhat awkward until Jess had said that she wouldn't be working in the shop any more as she needed the extra time to train before school started. The feelings were still there however. At least for him. Garrick took one final deep breath before locked the door and made his way upstairs.

As he walked into the room the party was far livelier than he had left it. Everyone was starting to mingle and talk about their summers but Garrick only wanted to find Raalm. And there he was, sitting on the couch again with his shirt open and his scroll in his hand studying something. Garrick walked over and pulled the tablet from his hands to which his only response was "Why?" with with a tired glance in Garrick's direction.

"Because you now have a job tonight," Garrick said, sitting down next to him. "One, keep me away from Jess and two, keep me safe from Valarie."

"Nope, this is what you get for playing matchmaker" Raalm replied with a small grunt, but he still turned to look around the room. "I'm guessing you don't want to play that stupid game now then?" he added with a relieved look.

"Hell no, we are still playing that," Garrick said with a smile. "There's one girl here who would love to get a kiss from you."

"Who?" Raalm asked with a hint of confusion.

"Ellie," Garrick told him, giving a nod in the girls direction.

"Oh yeah, Opal told me about her, forgot she was on Valarie's team," he replied, not bothering to even look at her.

"She's pretty cute you know," Garrick said to him truthfully.

Actually she was probably the best looking girl in their year. Her electric blue hair, matching eyes and light freckles made sure that she was noticed every time she walked into the room. He figure was small but well looked after, her purple crop top showing off her well defined stomach and her shorts revealing a pair of well toned legs. She was also incredibly respectful and one of the top students at Beacon, not quite making the top five leader board for fighters but always near the top in grades. In fact the only person who scored higher was Raalm. Garrick had always been confused as to why Ellie and Raalm had never gotten together, even though Ellie seemed interested and they seemed practically perfect for each other.

"Are you seriously not interested in her?" Garrick asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"Don't really know her," Raalm replied as he made a move to snatch his scroll from Garrick's hand and succeeded in taking it back. "Doesn't mean I want to either," he quickly added, giving Garrick a knowing look.

"Okay," Garrick smiled. "What were you looking at anyway?"

"Our schedule for next year, there's only two weeks before school starts again," Raalm said, scrolling down what looked like a rather long list.

"Gihl's been studying that too" said a voice from behind them.

Garrick looked around and saw Arnold looking over Raalm's shoulder.

"You all should be," Raalm said as Arnold sat down in a chair opposite them.

"Nahh, we get a run down when we go back anyway," Arnold replied. "Besides, I've been focused on other things," he said as he held up a metal bar in each hand. "New batteries for your aura meters."

Garrick stood up and walked to his room to retrieve his vambrace and returned to find Raalm fitting his own back onto his wrist. Garrick sat down and handed the armour piece over to Arnold who began working on it.

"Thanks again for helping me test these things out, it took most of the summer to work out the kinks because dad wouldn't give me access to _Scroll TECH_ but the new batteries should last twice as long," he said as he pulled the old battery off and attached the new one. "I already gave Evie and Opal theirs but Opal still refuses to let me touch her daggers so I had to walk her through it."

"That's because she's scared you will run off with them and she'll have to shoot you," Garrick smiled as he took his vambrace back and decided to attach it to his arm as well.

"Probably right to be scared then," Arnold sighed. "I would love to get my hands on even the tiniest shaving of Exaltite."

Garrick couldn't help but chuckle as he knew Arnold's obsession with rare things. Exaltite was the rarest metal on Remnant, so rare in fact that he knew that just one of her daggers was worth more Lien than everyone in the room would make in their lives put together. He wouldn't have been surprised if Opal daggers were probably the highest concentrated amount of it in all of Vale. Its rarity was such a shame to most weapon-smiths as it was also considered a perfect metal for melee weapons such as swords and daggers.

"Well, she barely lets us touch them," Raalm said, putting down his scroll and sighing deeply. "A little advice, never touch her bow."

"I'm not suicidal just yet," Arnold laughed and turned to Garrick. "Sorry I brought extra people by the way."

"Its cool, little worried about Valarie though, she keeps eyeing up the stairs to my room" Garrick replied, earning a slight chuckle from both of his friends. "Anyway, I'm going to sort the champagne out."

Garrick stood up and walked his way to the kitchen while everyone talked and laughed with their friends. As he walked in, he saw Opal, Evie and Jess talking while they leant against the counter.

"Are you really not going to tell what the initiation test is?" Jess was asking. She turned to look at Garrick as he entered the kitchen.

"Sorry, not allowed," Opal said back with a teasing smile. "Wouldn't be fair to the other firsties."

"But the others are not your friends," Jess tried to reason back with a smile.

"Sorry Jess, school r-rules," Evie said returning the smile.

"Fine," she said. "What about you Garrick, you don't care about the rules. Wanna tell me?"

"Initiation? Was that the form a had to fill out?" He smiled at Opal.

"Nope, that was the application," she smiled back.

"Then I have no idea what my initiation was, maybe they erased it from my mind because I couldn't be trusted with such valuable information," he teased.

"You three are mean," Jess smiled and walked out of the kitchen.

"You think she can handle the initiation?" Opal asked Garrick after she left.

"Easily," was all Garrick said as he pulled twelve champaign glasses from the cupboard.

"Why does your mom have so many?" Opal said as he continued to pull them out.

"Her and dad used to host new years parties every year, guess she just hasn't thrown them away," Garrick said as he uncorked the champaign and began to fill the glasses.

Just as he filled the first one, a scroll on the counter began to buzz and Opal grabbed it quickly and smiled.

"I'll be back in a minute," she said as she left the room and answered the call. "Hey Beth, how's training going?" was all Garrick heard before she made it out of earshot.

"Are they dating?" Garrick asked Evie but she only shrugged her shoulders and smiled.

"I doubt it," Raalm said as he walked into the room and grabbed another beer from the fridge. "If they were then I would hear from Beth more often."

Garrick watched as his partner pulled the cap off the beer and exited the room, but he wasn't the only one watching. Out the corner of his eye, he noticed Evie shift slightly as her eyes followed Raalm. She looked a little uncomfortable.

"Everything okay?" he asked, a little concerned.

Evie replied with a simple nod and returned to sipping her orange juice. Garrick had noticed Evie acting a little weird around Raalm since they had returned from the outskirts, well weirder than normal. He often found her watching Raalm with a concerned expression and always seemed embarrassed when she was caught.

"Did something happen between you two?" He asked.

Evie simply shook her head and turned to walk out of the kitchen, passing Tina on the way.

"What's up with her?" she asked as she smiled at Garrick. "She looks a little flustered."

"No idea, wanna help bring these out?" Garrick asked as he picked up one of the trays the glasses sat upon, earning a nod from Tina who grabbed the other.

They both walked into the front room and began to hand the glasses out to everyone as Opal came back in the door with a large smile on her face. Once everyone else had theirs, Garrick picked up the two remaining glasses and handed it to Opal.

"Good talk with your girlfriend I take it," Garrick teased.

Opal blushed a little and looked like she was going to respond but Garrick cut her off by calling for the rooms attention.

"I have a few words to say," he spoke loudly to be heard across the room and turned to Opal. "Opal, I have know you for nearly a year now and I can honestly say that you have been one hell of a pain in my ass; but, that being said, its a year I wouldn't trade for anything. I think I speak for all of Team ROGE when I say that we think of you as family now and that we couldn't imagine the rest of our lives without you." he said pausing to smile at Opal who returned it in kind. "The rest are just here for free booze," he added, earning a laugh from the room. "Anyway," he said raising his glass. "Happy birthday."

Everyone raised their glasses and toasted along as Garrick took downed his own drink and turned to pull Opal into another hug. "Happy birthday sis," he said.

"How long did you practice that?" she joked as she pulled Garrick into a tighter hug.

"About two minutes," he chuckled back.

Opal clung to him for a while until Tina came and disrupted them to hand Opal a small box.

"I didn't really have time to find much so I hope this is okay," she said with a shy smile as Opal opened it and pulled out a thin chain with a small arrow pendant, the head of which was carved from opal and shining a myriad of colours.

"It's beautiful, thank you," Opal said and pulled Tina into a quick hug. As they separated, Tina's twin sister Rebecca approached.

"I didn't really have time to shop so I spoke to Glynda and asked if we could swap rooms since the original plan put you on the ground floor, I know you like having quick access to the roof," Rebecca said with a smile.

"Glynda let you swap?" Garrick said in disbelief.

"She had to get Raalm to confirm it but yeah. Besides, Glynda actually likes me," Rebecca taunted with a smile before she turned to drag her sister back to their previous conversation with Ellie and Trevis of Team VERT.

Two hours passed in which everyone danced, talked and ate cake until Garrick finally decided that everyone had had enough to drink and pulled out a bottle and held it up.

"Alright everyone, fun time, and no pecking, proper kisses only" he said and placed the bottle on the table. "Anyone taking part?"

Most of the room moved and began to sit around the bottle, Ellie and Tina giggling as they sat down. Once all the movement had stopped, only three people were left standing. Raalm, Evie and Jess.

"Nope," Garrick said, standing up to put his arm around Raalm's shoulders and dragging him to the group. "You are not sitting this one out."

He practically threw Raalm into a space between him and Valarie while Evie and Jess sat down just outside the circle but close enough to watch.

"Alright birthday girl, you go first," Garrick said with a grin.

Opal span the bottle and everyone watched closely to see who it landed on. After a couple of seconds spinning it began to slow down and finally landed on Arnold.

"Well, look like your going to be the first guy to kiss me," Opal smiled as they both leant forward and pressed their lips together for a full second.

As they drew away, Trevis span the bottle and had to kiss Valarie, next was Rebecca who had to kiss Ellie and next it came to Garrick. He span it with enough force that it continued to spin far longer than it did the others but it finally began to slow and stopped on Tina. He leant forwards and pressed his lips to hers for a second before pulling back.

"Your turn Raalm," he said and gave his partner a nudge.

Raalm sighed as he span the bottle, a slight clanging sound could be heard over the music as his chain hit it. It span for a couple of seconds before it finally stopped on Ellie. Garrick smiled as Raalm gave him a suspicious look but he didn't back down, both Ellie and Raalm leant forward and pressed their lips together. Raalm stopped the kiss but Garrick saw Ellie stay there for a second before sitting back in her place and hurriedly whispered to Tina, though Raalm seemed oblivious to it all.

Next up was Valarie who gave Garrick a quick smile before she span the bottle. Garrick's felt his ears twitch as he heard shuffling coming from Jess' direction but the bottle eventually came to a stop on Reyes, another boy from her team, and leant in to kiss him.

"Wow, guess there only you left and then I've kissed my whole team," she said with a wink to Ellie as she sat back in her seat that caused the blue haired girl to giggle and wink back.

The game continued and eventually it came back around to Opal who span it once again. After a brief spin, it landed on Tina who blushed slightly as she leant in a little too fast and caused Opal to giggle. Their lips met but they didn't pull apart straight away, instead they held it for a couple more seconds until Valarie whistled at them both. Opal was the first to pull away but she seemed to be keeping her eyes on Tina as both of them sat back.

The people took it in turns to spin again, Rebecca having to spin twice as the first landed on her sister, until finally it was Garrick's turn again. Garrick spun the bottle a little more gently this time and was a little shocked as it came to a stop on Raalm, who gave him another suspicious look.

"Why do you keep giving me that look," Garrick said as he licked his upper lip to tease Raalm.

"No reason," Raalm replied as he turned around to face Garrick and leant in, only for Opal to shout for them to wait.

"You two have been flirting for ages," Opal said and paused for a second before she continued, ignoring Raalm's protest of innocence. "Why don't we make this kiss a little more fun," she said as she pulled a ten Lien card out and placed it on the table with a smile. "To whoever stays in the kiss the longest without pulling away."

A slight murmur filled the room and five other people placed the same amount next to Opal's.

"Oh the things I do for money," Garrick said before he leant in to kiss Raalm.

Garrick wasn't sure if Raalm would participate at first but as their lips met he felt Raalm push into him slightly harder to deepen the kiss. Not one to back down from a challenge, Garrick raised a hand and put it on the back of Raalm's neck to pull him in even deeper. A few seconds passed of them kissing before Garrick realised this strategy wasn't going to work and decided he needed to do something more. He hesitated slightly but began to push his tongue into Raalm's mouth hoping it would make him pull back, but it didn't. Instead Raalm responded in kind and the two of them were now in a full on make out war, both of them refusing to back down until Garrick had an idea. With an inwards smile, he moved onto his knees and leant closer into Raalm, pushing him slightly backwards as he let his hand drop down to Raalm's shoulder and began to pull at his unzipped jacket in an attempt to take it off. This worked, Raalm immediately pulled away and took a deep breath as Garrick smiled at him.

"That was cheating," Raalm said as he straightened himself out, flinching slightly at Valarie's touch as she tried to help.

"I have no idea what your talking about," Garrick said back as he scooped up the money. "Easiest sixty Lien of my life."

Garrick sat back down and looked at everyone else to find them looking at both him and Raalm with shocked faces. Arnold however was the first to speak.

"Are you two sure you're not gay?" he asked with a smile.

"Why? You wanna be next? You're going to have to ask Raalm first," Garrick joked, causing the girls to giggle. "Your turn to spin Raalm."

"I'm out," he said as he raised his hands in defeat and stood up. "I need another drink and I didn't finish reading the schedule."

Garrick nodded and continued with the game, though it became much tamer as more people were also starting to leave after the third round to continue their conversations and Evie, who had been watching with Jess, decided she was tired and went to bed. After his fourth spin, which landed on Ellie, Garrick and Arnold both stood up, declared themselves done and walked into the kitchen to get another drink.

"Your welcome by the way," Arnold smiled as he grabbed a beer.

"What for?" Garrick replied, a little confused.

"Stopping the bottle from hitting Valarie," he said with a small chuckle. "I noticed Jess seemed a little uncomfortable at the way she was looking at you."

"Ahh... That was you? Thanks I guess," Garrick smiled back.

"Sorry I had to stop it Raalm but hey, you seemed to enjoy it," he teased as he pulled the cap off his beer.

Garrick let out a small laugh before he replied. "Me and Raalm just mess around is all, we never really mean anything by it."

"Oh, guess I should take the ring back then," Raalm teased half-heartedly as he walked into the kitchen once again and pulled a beer from the fridge.

"Aww honey, you brought a ring?" Garrick replied, hopping with false excitement to which Raalm just grunted and shook his head.

"I don't care how much you and Opal drink tonight or how little sleep you get, training starts at six," he said as he changed the conversation and walked back out, only to pause briefly. "If your not awake enough, I'll make Evie shoot you with voltage bullets until you are."

"You're so mean when we're around other people," Garrick shouted after him.

"He actually has a point, me and the others should really get going too," Arnold said as he pulled his coat from the hanger he placed it on and put it on. "It was a super fun party though, we should hang out more."

"Yeah definitely," Garrick smiled and shook Arnold's hand.

The next fifteen minutes were full of hugs and goodbyes between everyone as people began to grab their coats and and head out into the night.

"See you at school Rogue," Arnold called as him and his team walked away, with Team VERT walking off in the opposite direction.

"You too Argent," Garrick replied as he waved goodbye and smiled at Arnold's deliberate mistaking of their team name.

Garrick closed the door to the bakery and looked at the clock on the wall only to sigh as he discovered that it was gone three in the morning, which meant that Raalm would be waking them up for training in less than three hours. And he still needed to clean up. He turned on the alarm and walked up the stairs, albeit a little slower than normal so as to not fall down, to find the front room empty as everyone had apparently decided to go to bed. Everyone except one person. Jess was laid on the couch asleep, her chest slowly rising and falling as she breathed softly. Garrick smiled and walked over to the closet to grab a spare blanket and threw it over her so that she didn't get cold during the night.

With one last look around the room, he sighed and decided he would sort out the mess tomorrow after training and made his way up to his room, where he found Raalm asleep in the bed they had been sharing for the past two weeks. Garrick quickly typed out a message to Jess' mom, to let her now that Jess had fallen asleep and not to worry, before stripping down to his boxers and climbing into the bed beside Raalm. He closed his eyes and felt the abyssal darkness overtake his mind as he fell into unconsciousness immediately.

 **?**

The man knelt on the floor coughing in pain from the beating he had received, small droplets of blood spraying from his mouth. He kept his head bowed, his eyes never leaving the hard concrete due to fear. Looking up caused him pain, not just from his neck but from the punches he knew he would receive if he did, so he kept looking at the black boots of the man that stood before him.

"And you're sure it was him?" the man with black boots said, the tone of his voice making it very clear that his question was to be answered.

"Y-Yes sir," the kneeling man coughed back, his eyes still never leaving the ground. "I recognised him immediately."

"And you immediately came to tell me?" he asked, his tone exactly the same as before, as he walked around the kneeling man.

"N-No, I was t-too scared at first," the man stutter back, his voice shaking with fear. "But I didn't want to run from you any more, I thought this would help you forgive me leaving, for running away."

He heard the man in boots laugh at this, it wasn't cold as many would suspect but warm and inviting. It was the laugh of a creature who preferred to lure things to its den rather than chase them.

"Well, thank you for returning. This information will be very helpful," the man said as he patted the kneeling man's back. "And don't worry, all is forgiven."

The bloody and beaten man let out a sigh of relief and began to raise slightly, but his relief was short lived. He felt the cold first. The chill of ice that made his body shake as a clawed hand plunged into his back and gripped his spine. The pain was unbearable but no scream left his lips. He felt the cold spread from his wound as it made its way towards his stomach and caused a cold burn to erupt.

"But," the booted man continued. "I can't have people thinking they can defy me and get away with it. Also you should know," he leaned in to whisper into the dying man's ear. "We were never looking for you."

The man's eyes widened as he felt the hand that gripped his spine twist with an incredible amount of force and pull itself out. The movement and separation caused his now frozen stomach to shatter and spill out onto the floor in front of him. He collapse, and with his last breath, watched the picture of frozen blood and entrails darken until all that was left was nothingness.


End file.
